Peacekeeper: Enemies of Earth
by MilleniaMaster
Summary: Velinda Hillis; a young boy with a divine heritage kept hidden from him until the day his foster family died. Now, he must cope with the loss and learn that he is the man fated to protect the world from a mysterious enemy from the stars who promise to take their world for their own, and promise the death of the gods…
1. Prologue

This is the first story I've written that I'm serious about getting published to the world someday. I know I still have a few kinks to work out so constructive criticism is very welcome. Shout-out to **Muse of Fanfiction** (fantastic writer, by the way) who edited my work too! She's been a great help and I'm not sure I would've had much confidence in posting this without her.

She gave a shout-out to me earlier too, which was nice. However there is one thing I must correct her on.

...

...

I'm a guy, not a girl.

Whatever. Water under the bridge. Enjoy!

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**Enemies of Earth**

_Gods are the rulers of mankind; thought to be immortal and deathless, with unimaginable and unlimited power. They are thought to be perfect human beings; so perfect that they weren't called humans. They were a different species entirely. The mortals worshiped them, sacrificed for them, asking for blessing and protection. When a man prays, his god hears it, and it will answer._

_What makes a god so different is their special blood: ichor, the divine golden fluid of life that pumps through their veins. It is this blood that gives the gods their elegant looks. Their clean, flawless skin, their perfectly curved bodies, their conditions healthy, endless endurance and strength, all stems from ichor._

_The union of an immortal and mortal is said to be a demigod. Their blood is distinct, a mix of ichor and man. Many heroes have seen victories over their chthonic enemies because their divine blood had allowed them to find strength. Their fathers, kings of the realms, have watched their children lead massive armies to fight the wicked and wrong._

_But despite the titles, despite the great gift that has befallen this species, gods can be very humane. __They are capable of making mistakes and misjudgements. They are selfish, greedy, ruthless and fearful.__But when a threat comes to their world, they will defend it._

_However, if__that threat__be__too great…__if__that threat be capable of killing a god… when our protectors are too afraid__to respond to our pleas of salvation, peace and liberty… who__do we__—__mere__and simple__mortals—turn to?_

_**1923…**_

_**A small town in Greece…**_

A small radio was playing on the middle of a table in a living room. A young girl quickly reached for it, trying to beat a young boy to it, but he slapped her hand away. The girl yelped and pulled her hand back, and then tears started to streak down her face because of the pain.

"Why do you have to be so mean?" Rachael wails as she rubs her sore hand, speaking in her native Greek language.

"Why do you have to be so bloody annoying?" Vel shot back, also speaking in the native tongue, agitated that the girl sitting across the table from him was being such an annoyance. He placed his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands as he listened to the radio, which was broadcasting something; after two rejections, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon finally agreed to accept Prince Albert's proposal for marriage. The girl on the other side of the table whimpered and climbed off the old wooden chair, dragging her blanket along behind her. She walked into the kitchen, where her mother stood at a sink full of water, cleaning some dishes. Rachael tugged on her mother's blouse to get her attention.

"Mom, Vel hit me again!" she cried. Her mother, Melanie, set the dishes down and wiped her hands dry before picking up the girl.

"Oh, sweetie, did he hurt you?" she asks in a soft, calming voice, like a mother usually would when addressing her hurt child. Rachael nodded and showed her mother the back of her hand. There, a long red mark throbbed.

"Vel! Come here right now!" The woman's voice suddenly changed, sounding high, demanding and scary. Vel walked into the kitchen and stopped at the door, a long face on his features because he knew he was in trouble. "You know better than to hit your sister. Apologize to her," Melanie demanded. Vel kept his mouth closed and didn't say anything. "Apologize!"

Still nothing. Vel stared blankly at his mother. Melanie sighed as she wished there was a way for the two children to get along better.

"Go to your room. I'll talk to you later."

The boy turned around and walked away, leaving Rachael and her mother alone. The young girl sniffed and turned to face her mother. "Mommy, does Vel hate me?"

Melanie looked back at her child, finding it very unreal how her young daughter could ask such a question. "Of course not, honey. There should be no excuse for him to hit you like that. I'll go talk to him and make sure he doesn't hit you again, okay?"

The girl nodded. Melanie grasped Rachael's hand and gave it a soothing kiss, which instantly put a smile on the girl's face. The mother set her daughter down and let her run off, where she then turned around to finish washing the dishes.

The Hillis family was a family under constant heat. Vel and Rachael almost always never got along well, and it was up to Melanie and her husband, Chris, to make sure it didn't get any worse than a slap on the hand. Vel had yelled at the girl plenty of times, but physical abuse was starting to look like Vel's newest option. It was coming close to the point where the parents were silently starting to regret the adoption.

Vel had been a baby in a basket delivered to a nursery home and was raised there until Chris and Melanie came along. They had just had their daughter and were looking for a boy with the thought that he could be the big, protective brother to their child as she grew up. The results were quite the opposite of what they wanted. Vel hated Rachael to no end. He ignored her at first, and then started to talk back in order to keep her away. It grew into a fit of yelling and screaming which would hurt Rachael's feelings more than once a day. Melanie and Chris made the mistake of teaching their daughter that their adopted son would protect her in times of need. They never considered that Vel might grow up not liking her at all.

An hour later, Melanie heard the front door close and shut. Her husband was home from work. Chris was in some roguish, dirty overalls and workpants. He worked at a small store just down the street from where they lived. It was just barely enough to keep them living in their house for a little longer before they had to figure out how to earn more money. They had considered that Melanie should start working as well, but she wouldn't dare to leave her rival children home alone together, and as poor as they were already, there was no way they would be able to afford a babysitter.

Rachael ran to the front door. Chris smiled at the sight of her daughter and picked her up as she ran up to him. He walked into the kitchen and found his wife smiling. "I'm back." He gives his wife a quick kiss on the forehead. "There wasn't any trouble while I was gone, was there?"

A long sigh answered Chris' question for him.

"Vel hit Rachael," Melanie broke to him.

"He did what? Where?" Chris inquires in surprise, looking at his daughter. Rachael held up her hand so he could see the mark.

"Right there, daddy."

"Alright, I'll go talk to him." Chris set his daughter down and took a step towards his adopted son's room, but Melanie grabbed his arm.

"No, Chris. I'll do it. I want to tell him something anyway." She looked at her husband with pleading eyes. Chris could never resist those eyes, so he nodded in agreement.

Melanie untied her apron and walked towards Vel's room. It was closed and she could tell the light in the room was on because of the light peeking out from under the door. Melanie opened the door and gasped at what she saw.

Vel was sitting on the edge of his bed, a knife in hand. The blade of the knife was wet with gold liquid and the boy's wrist was cut open in three different places, dripping the same golden blood down his hand where it dropped onto the carpet at his feet. Vel stared up at Melanie with a surprised look, not expecting her to walk in like this so suddenly. Melanie rushed in and snatched the knife out of Vel's hand. She grabbed a towel from the drawer and wrapped it around Vel's cut arm. Looking up at the boy, she yelled out, "You're not supposed to do this to yourself, Vel! It's not safe!"

"It doesn't hurt, though," Vel responded calmly. The woman shook her head and gently removed the towel from the boy's wrist. The gold liquid was smeared all over the wounds now and stained the towel.

"Keep this over your arm," Melanie told Vel and left to retrieve some bandages.

Vel was an incredible wonder to both her and Chris. They had never imagined they would adopt a kid that could do the impossible, but yet here they had done it. Vel had a running record of miraculously surviving dangerous events.

This included a car explosion. The family had evacuated the vehicle except for Vel, who was trapped in his seat. When the car blew up, Chris and Melanie thought for sure they had lost him. But Vel had survived. When they pulled him out of the wreckage, he was almost unrecognizable. All his hair had burnt off and his skin was torched. That was the first time they learned that Vel didn't bleed normal blood. Instead of red raw skin and blood, it was a brown and golden colour. The frightening images flashed through their minds every time they looked at the boy, but unlike Vel's wounds, it never went away.

Then there was the time when Vel had also fallen from a tree from a great height. He had climbed all the way up to the highest branch. Melanie had yelled at him several times to climb back down before he hurt himself, and just as he agreed to start coming back down, Vel's foot slipped from the branch and he fell twenty feet, hitting every branch on his way down. Melanie watched in horror as the boy fell down like a rag doll, hitting the ground with a sickening thud. But once again, he had shocked her when he managed to get himself up with nothing more than a bruise for every branch he hit.

The third miracle was when Melanie had received a call saying that Vel had been bitten by a spotted whip snake. He had apparently been playing with friends and found the reptile in the bushes. A friend's parent had brought Vel to the hospital and called her about it. By the time Melanie and Chris had gotten to the hospital, Vel was completely fine. The doctor had told them that Vel's body had completely obliterated the poison without any aid of medicines or injections of anti-poison.

This was the reason why the couple held on to the boy. He was a miracle child. There was something about him that they knew would lead him to great things.

Melanie returned with some bandages and a clean wet cloth and started to clean up Vel's arm. Vel knew that his blood was different from everyone else's, so he would sometimes cut himself just to watch his gold blood drip from his skin. It was a habit that Melanie and Chris tried to discourage, but he still did it on occasion. Melanie wiped the strange blood clean and wrapped it firmly with a bandage. When she was done, she looked up at Vel and grasped his smaller hands in hers.

"Vel, do you know how special you are?" Melanie asked the boy. He shook his head with a depressing frown. "You're a very special kid, so special that you can change the world."

"How do you know that?" Vel queried.

"I just know. A mother is supposed to know." A moment of pause allowed the woman to think hard about her next choice of words. "Look, I know that things are tough now, but they'll get better, whether it's soon or in the long-run. You're going to become a very great man, Vel. You just need to see it. This abuse on yourself and others isn't good for you. You can change. You can do tremendous things."

Vel stared down at his mother grasping his hands so gently. This was not the first time she had talked to him about his abuse of his younger foster sibling, but it was the first time she was complimenting him on his potential. It was something that no one had ever done before. He could start to feel gratitude swelling in his heart.

"You're a good kid, Vel. You just need to realize what you're capable of."

Vel looked his mother in the eye. "What _am_ I capable of?"

"Anything," the woman replied. Vel began to smile. Once Melanie saw it, she smiled back and gave her son a hug. After that, Vel was allowed out of his room, but he didn't attempt to make up with his sister. Vel was left with nothing to do other than to draw. He grabbed a random sheet of paper and a pencil and started to draw stuff; anything that appeared in his mind. He usually drew things like landscapes or mythical monsters without any reference to a picture. They weren't very good for a kid his age, but with the weather outside restricting his range of activities, there was nothing better to do.

Outside it was still cold and covered with snow. It was mid-February and everyone was still trying to endure the last days of winter before spring finally came. The snow was just beginning to melt, so everyone in Greece knew that it would be here soon. Vel tried to draw his neighbourhood while it was still blanketed by the white powdery fluff outside.

_Boom!_

Everything shook. The table, the cups, the pictures on the wall. Vel's whole body shook to the bone from a huge explosion that tore the other end of his house into pieces. He didn't scream for some reason, but he stared in the direction of where the blast came from. Dust billowed out from the door to the room he was in, making him cough and cover his face. Daylight shone through the door as well, reflecting off of the dust rolling in. That's all there was; the loud explosion that shook his home, followed by silence except for the falling debris. He stepped down from the chair and slowly walked towards the door.

Once he got to the entrance, the boy's dark red eyes widened in horror. The room was in completely destroyed; there wasn't even a room there anymore. Nearly nothing of it remained except for what littered the ground. There, in the piles of destruction, Vel could see two adult bodies. They were both doused in red blood, face down so he couldn't see their faces. Also in the wreckage was a child, his foster sister. Rachael was bruised and bloody, crying into the air like a baby girl, totally helpless. Vel would have actually walked through the mess to help her out. But something arose from the smoky clouds behind her.

A tall dark humanoid figure appeared above the girl. Gleaming red eyes glared down at him and Vel stared up in stunned awe. Its skin appeared a very dark coal colour and jagged like rocks. The monster hummed in interest as it stepped towards Vel.

"There you are…" the monster grumbled. Rachael cried out to Vel in fear, but Vel was full of fear himself. He stared down at his sister.

And then turned around and ran.

Behind him, the destruction was already beginning. The monster took massive swings at the house, trying to eliminate Vel. With each swing, a huge chunk of the house would get blown away, getting closer and closer to Vel as he tried to run through the house to the back door. He turned down the hall and spotted it, but the walls around him started to crumble. Everything suddenly slowed down as the walls and roof above Vel's head started to converge on him. He could see the monster's boney fingers ripping through the building and take him out with enormous brutality that knocked him out cold.

... ... ...

As soon as Vel started to feel his conscious shift, he became fully awake. He was laying on a soft bed; an incredibly soft bed. He was tucked in under the sheets, perfectly straight with his arms at his sides and his head looking straight up into the ceiling, which appeared to be made of a dark stone. When he tried to move, he felt sharp stings of pain all around his body. It hurt immensely and caused tears of agony to develop in Vel's eyes. He couldn't move his arms to wipe them away for his arms hurt too much, so he just let himself cry.

His bawling was heard by someone outside, for the door to the small box room opened and a young woman appeared. She was amazingly pretty to Vel. Her dark chocolate hair fell straight, stretching past her shoulders and brown eyes observed him with care and kindness. She wore a dark grey shoulder-to-floor dress, and her skin was perfectly clear and a pale peach colour. The worry on her face when she spotted Vel was genuine and pure, but Vel couldn't stop his crying. The woman stepped hastily to his side and knelt down next to the bed.

"It is okay. Everything is alright," she speaks in a soft, soothing voice that the boy had never even heard of before. She gently brushed Vel's jet black hair out of his face, trying to brighten him with a sweet smile of her own. Vel calmed down a little bit, but he didn't know what was going on.

"Where am I?" he hiccupped. "Where's my mother?"

The woman quietly hushed him. "You're mother is in a safe place right now." This gave Vel a little relief and he started to calm down a little more. His crying became less and less. "That's it. There's no need to cry. Everything is going to be okay."

The woman stayed with Vel and kept her smile on her face until he finally stopped crying. Then, she said she was briefly going to leave to fetch Vel some medicine. She came back later with a small bottle. In it was a transparent blue liquid that sloshed around in the bottle like water. She popped the cork off the lid and gently removed the covers from Vel's body. He mustered enough strength to raise his head and look down. Vel saw that he was in a simple shirt and shorts. Comfortable as they were, his skin started to become sensitive as soon as the cold air kicked it.

"Please remain still. This won't take long." The woman carefully poured a bit of the liquid into her hand, smeared it, and gently started to rub it on his arms and legs. Her fingers were soft and they gently moved up and down his limbs. Vel could seem the liquid evaporate into his skin and, gradually, he started to feel a little less sore. The liquid was quickly healing him. Vel smelled the air around him. The liquid was giving off a sweet like honey.

"There. This will help you feel better," the woman said, putting the cork back on the bottle.

"Thank you."

"You're very welcome."

"Where am I?" Vel asked. The woman looked up at Vel with somewhat of a surprised face, but she looked back down at her lap and hummed in thought.

"You are somewhere very sacred," the woman told him. "You are in the Underworld."

**Peacekeeper**

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Since the 1st happened to land on a Wednesday, I'll be posting new chapters every Wednesday until the story is done. Hope you enjoyed it. I'll try to respond to all who review (which shouldn't be to hard. I have so much time on my hands.)

Also! Since I'm more of a visual person, I found some Google images that will be on my profile who every character that makes an appearance. Go check them out if you have time!

May the Fates lead you to a happy year!


	2. Prologue continued

**Enemies of Earth**

It was a strange place, the Underworld. Vel was only allowed to look out the window of the room he stayed in while he recovered. He was amazed to see a humungous cavern outside; bigger than anything he had ever seen. Parts of the castle could be seen from there, and beyond that was a dead, flat plain where patches of fire burned and a long, bright river of magma and fire flowed right beside the castle. Huge stalactites hung from the ceiling far above the castle.

Vel began to wonder how long he had been here before he had woken up. It might have been a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, maybe. He would have been bored out of his mind, if not for the pretty lady that visited every now and then.

The woman's name turned out to be Melinoe. She came to give Vel some company and play with him when occasionally throughout the days. She would bring him food and water and they would talk about little things about themselves. She was becoming someone whom Vel could trust. He began to feel connect to her, like a true friend. Melinoe explained that she was a princess of the large castle they were in. She had two siblings; her older sister Macaria and her younger brother Zagreus. All three of them were the children of the king and queen, whom Vel was expected to meet once he fully recovered.

Vel had asked about his family and where they all were. Melinoe would waver at this question and only told him that they were all somewhere safe, and that her father would provide him with more details. She couldn't say any more than that.

Finally, the time came for Vel to get out of the room and meet the king and queen.

Melinoe took his hand and guided him down the hall, lit by torches up on the walls. The lanterns were made of some glossy black marble with a golden crown at the top where the flames burned brightly, never dying out. The floor of the hallway was made of a gray, smooth slated stone and the walls and ceiling were as black as coal. Arched windows lined up on the left wall separated by every five meters or so, putting on display the majesty of the world beyond the kingdom.

Melinoe led Vel up a flight of stairs and through an archway. The first thing he spotted was the huge golden chandelier which held maybe a hundred bright candles on the ceiling in the middle of the large room. Then he started to notice all the decorations around the room. All the metal-made décor on the walls, around each window and the big front entrance were sparkling brightly. He gazed at it all with bright eyes that reflecting the gleaming light.

Melinoe grabbed Vel's hand and continued to walk him along to the front of the room, where two people stood.

There was a man, tall and broad with black armour and black fabric all around his body with a bit of white trimming on it. He wore a black, spooky crown over his long white hair, and his skin was very clear and pale, just like Melinoe's. He looked very menacing to Vel. The man looked down at him with pitch-black eyes. He almost looked like a ghost.

The woman next to him looked nothing like him, however, except that she was wearing black as well; a dress similar to Melinoe's, wrapped around her until it nearly touched the floor. Vel could barely see the gleaming silver sandals on her feet. Her hair was a soft brown reaching just past her shoulders and her skin was a peachy colour unlike the king and Melinoe. It was more like Vel's colour of skin, but clean and healthy. The woman looked much nicer than the man standing next to her, with a small smile on her lips.

"So this is the boy?" the male inquires with a bit of an amused smirk.

"Yes, father. He is the one."

Vel glanced up at Melinoe and asked, "What do you mean?"

Melinoe was about to answer, but the man intervened. "You didn't tell him?"

"Forgive me, father, but I thought it was better if you told him yourself. If I said anything, he would have no need to see you," Melinoe asked, looking down to avoid her father's eye. Vel couldn't stare him in the eye either, so he understood why she looked away shyly. He was imitating.

Strangely, the man smiled and looked over to the woman next to him.

"Smart girl," he mused. The smile on the woman's face grew wider. The king turned back to his daughter and continued, "You may leave, sweetheart. We wish to talk with the boy alone."

Melinoe smiled in gratitude and bowed before turning and walking away. Vel watched her as she walked past the arch where they entered, out of the king and queen's sight, but not away from his sight. She stopped and turned around to him and waved. He smiled and waved back.

"Now, boy. Step forward," the man urged. Vel did as he was told and stood in front of the king and queen. "Do you know where you are?"

"I'm in the Underworld," Vel replied.

"Exactly. You are in my realm; a realm named after myself; Hades." The king gestured to the room they were in with open arms. "And you, my young friend, are among a very special group of people. You are a god, or you are becoming a god."

Vel stared back at Hades in shock. "I'm a god?"

"Yes you are," he responds with a smile. "You may have noticed a few things already that indicate that you are one. Your blood is very different than a mortal's, your endurance and strength can outmatch anyone around you, and even your eyes…"

Vel looked up at the Hades to look him right in the eye, but he was very menacing and scary to look at, so he quickly turned away. "You've probably noticed already how your eyes are very different from a mortal's."

The queen gently set her hand on her husband's arms. Hades turned to look at his wife and saw a strangely serious crease on her lips. Hades raised an eyebrow. "I can sense he is frightened by your presence, love. Why don't I take the boy and explain everything to him?"

Hades looked back at Vel, a curious, but scary furrow in his brows. "Do I scare you?"

"Hades, please," the woman requested. Hades conceded and the woman walked up to Vel and knelt down so she was at eye level with him. "Want to go for a walk?" she inquires kindly.

Vel grinned in relief and nodded and took the woman's outstretched hand. She guided him out the other side of the room that led immediately to a long bridge that overlooked the front, very large courtyard. The Underworld looked even more enormous now that Vel could see in every direction.

"Are we underground?" Vel asked.

"Yes we are. Interesting place isn't it. It's an entirely different world here. Though it is an enchanted realm, so the mortals will never find it if they dig down." The woman turned around and smiled at Vel. "Let's start with names, shall we? My name is Persephone. I am the Goddess of Spring. Now what's yours?"

"My name is Velinda."

"Well, Velinda, do you know why you're here?" Persephone inquired to Vel. He shook his head. "You are here because you must fulfil an important role. The world is going to need your help, someday."

"What do you mean?"

The goddess knelt down to his level again. "Since you are a god, Vel, you are capable of many things that most mortal men can't do. You have hidden powers inside of you that you can use to defeat the evil. You are here because you need to learn what exactly your duty is."

As Persephone spoke, questions were beginning to multiply in Vel's head. Ten minutes ago he was lying on his bed talking with Melinoe, and now he was being told he had a duty to defeat evil forces. Vel wondered how someone like him could do something like that. It was hard to take in and accept.

"Why do I have to do it?" he questioned in confusion.

Persephone stopped and turned to glance back at him. She didn't smile, but she didn't frown, either. In a blank expression, she said, "Because no one else can."

Vel wanted to know more. He wanted to know why no one else could do it. Why him all of a sudden? Why was he chosen? _Was_ he chosen? Or was it some cruel fate? A lot of questions spun in his mind, making him dizzy and unable to comprehend the weight that was being put on his shoulders. How could he use his powers? What kind of powers did he have? Who was supposed to teach and guide him? What exactly was the evil force that he had to defeat? Vel was finding out quickly that it was becoming hard to stand.

Persephone explained a little more to him. She said that most gods and goddesses live on top of a mountain called Mount Olympus, where the kingdom of the Olympians resided. There, a council of seven gods and five goddesses met to in order to help keep the world from heading towards chaos. Persephone didn't name them because she told Vel that he was going to meet all of them himself someday soon and he would learn what their names were then.

She also told Vel what to expect, such as what Olympus looked like. It was a giant golden palace that sat on top of the great mountain. Down the mountain path there were other homes, mansions that belonged to other minor gods that served the Olympians with their many duties to the world.

Afterwards, Persephone brought Vel back to her palace. Melinoe and Hades were waiting for them. Persephone left with Hades while Melinoe guided him back to his room. There was no daylight or moonlight in the Underworld, but according to the woman that guided Vel, it would be night-time on the surface and she had a duty to perform each night.

In the meanwhile, he rested on his bed and thought about all the things he had been told that day, trying to wrap his head around who he really was.

It was then that Vel wondered where his family was.

… … …

Five days later, it was time for Vel to meet the Olympians. Persephone would leave with him, as her time in the Underworld was up and some of the deities of the realm had come to say goodbye.

They rode out on a black chariot pulled by four black horses with long manes and pitch-black eyes. The Goddess of Spring waved to all her confidantes and servants as they rode down the path to the palace walls, where two souls stood guard at a large gate. They opened up the gates as they approached and on the other side Vel spotted a large three-headed hound. The hound raised its three heads and barked at them as they rode by.

They headed towards a river. Vel saw how they were riding straight towards it and thought to stop Persephone, but then the horses began to magically float into the air while running. He could feel his heart suddenly jumpstart into a panic attack as the chariot lifted off the ground. They launched off the bank and Vel gripped the edges of the chariot tightly. He had never flown on anything before, so it was very scary to him to suddenly be flying. The goddess put her arm around him in a protective manner, as if she understood that Vel didn't like flying, and at the same time she waved down to a man on a large boat in the river as well.

They flew up into an enormous wormhole. It was long, and held a bright light at the very end. It was too bright for Vel's eyes to adjust to, so he shielded them with his arm. Once they were past the opening of the cave, he could see the land around him.

They were in a big mountain range. The snow on the mountains was melting and at one point Vel even saw an avalanche start. The chariot flew towards the highest peak in the mountain range; Mytikas.

All he could see was a large tip of rock and earth. He began to wonder if it was all a lie, but then the chariot started to glow. Something else on the mountain glowed in response and started to reveal a palace that faded into view.

Vel finally got his first look at Olympus.

The castle was much larger and more spectacular than Vel had ever thought. He could see a mix of gold, which was all the decorations and structures, including the gates and the statues. There was a pale stone, which were the walkways and the walls, and there was a bunch of green and blue—the trees, gardens and fountains that were in almost every backyard in every home. The clouds began to fade away as well, so the image was set perfectly against a bright blue background.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Persephone inquired to Vel, seeing his awed expression. The boy nodded in response, too amazed to speak.

The chariot flew down to the golden gates at the front of the palace walls, where a large man stood. He was wearing a white exomis and tunic, and had a large iron club heaved onto his shoulder. His hair was short, curly and bronze in colour. The man bowed to them as Persephone and Vel stepped off of the chariot. The boy's legs were shaky and he nearly fell onto the misty ground.

"Greetings, Lady Persephone. It is good to see you again," the man welcomed. As he stood up straight, his eyes laid on Vel. "Who is this? He looks familiar."

"This is Velinda. He's an immortal like us." The goddess urged Vel to step forward.

"Ah, I see. I heard that there was a boy who would come soon. Welcome to Olympus, Velinda."

The boy nodded quickly. "It's nice to meet you too, um…"

"Heracles. I am the gatekeeper of Olympus."

Vel nodded again. Heracles then turned around to wave the gates open without even touching them. Persephone grasped Vel's hand and guided him through the gates onto the pale stone path the led up to the large temple on the very top of the mountain. The walkway was built along many homes and settlements with other paths that circled the entire mountain to reach the other homes all around Olympus. They walked all the way to the palace, where giant stone pillars stood tall and golden statues of people were placed all along the front steps. Persephone and Vel entered the giant doors that were the entrance to the palace.

They walked into a large open dorm with twelve finely-made golden thrones circling an open dome of what looked like a bird's eye view of the surface of Earth. It looked so real, and even had moving clouds that cast shadows down on the surface. It looked impossibly real. Vel looked down at it with wide open eyes and didn't notice the people sitting down on the thrones before him.

"Did we come at a bad time?" Persephone asked, seeing that everyone was seated for a meeting.

"No," answered the man directly across from them. Vel looked up and saw twelve of the most perfect people he had ever seen. They all looked beautiful, with flawless skin and toned bodies, perfect curves and healthy-looking hair, peach and tan skin with bright, vibrant eyes, clothed in tunics and dresses that made them all look like royal kings and queens. "We had a messenger come to us about your arrival. We were waiting you to come here."

"I see. Vel?" The woman next to Vel knelt down to him. "Do as they say. I'm going to the gardens for a bit."

Vel felt shaken. "But I want you to stay. I'd feel better if you stayed," he whimpers pleadingly. The boy had looked so distraught when he said this, but although Persephone felt touched, there wasn't much she could do about it. The Olympians wanted to talk to Vel and Vel alone.

"They're not going to do anything to you. Just listen to what they have to tell you and come find me again afterwards." Persephone then gave him a quick hug and a reassuring smile before standing and leaving the room.

He then turned to face the council all looking at him and he felt like running after the woman who had cared for him for the past couple of days.

"Do not fear, child. Step forward," the man across from him encouraged. Vel took a few steps forward until he joined the circle of people. He didn't dare step on the life-like replica of Earth's surface. "What is your name, boy?"

"Velinda Trevor Hillis," the young boy answered.

"But you go by Vel?" the blonde bearded man inquired with a perked eyebrow. Vel nodded. "Interesting." He readjusted himself on his seat. "What has Persephone told you so far?"

"She said that I'm a god with an important duty," Vel responded shyly. Some of the goddesses in the council couldn't help by smile at the boy for his shy and cute look.

"I see. And you do not know what that duty is yet, do you?" Vel shook his head this time. The man hummed to himself in thought.

"He has much to learn," the woman next to the man said quietly.

"We have time. We can teach him and guide him. Once he reaches adulthood, he will be allowed to explore as he pleases," the man replied back.

"You would let him go out on his own, Zeus?"

"I will not make the same mistake, Hera. Not as I had with... _him_," Zeus states firmly. The woman nodded and Zeus turned his head back to Vel. The boy had heard not much of their small conversation.

"Vel, my name is Zeus. I am the king of Mount Olympus and all gods and goddesses. All that you see in this room are the Olympians. They will help you understand what your role is and teach you the necessities of being able to fully comprehend what it is that you are tasked with."

"What do I have to do?" Vel asked. "Persephone told me that the world needed my help."

"Yes, it does. You see, there is a strange new race of beings that have come to our world. They are a threat to everyone on Earth, and menacing enough that no one is really willing to drive them off of our planet. But the Fates prophesized that one day a boy would be born with the courage to defeat this new foe. That boy, Velinda, is you."

Vel could suddenly feel the heat being put on him.

"That is why you will stay with us until you are ready to go out into the world on your own. Do you understand what I'm telling you?" inquired Zeus. Vel, although hesitant, nodded his head slightly in response. "Good. Eileithyia!" Zeus bellows suddenly, making Vel jump.

A moment later, a woman in a white dress hurried into the room from the right corridor. Her eyes were a sweet caramel colour just like her dark blonde hair. "Take Vel to his room, and then bring him to see Persephone in the gardens," Zeus instructed. The woman nodded and held out her hand to Vel for him to take. The boy hesitantly did so and he was guided away from the council of twelve into a long hallway.

As Eileithyia led Vel down the corridor, the boy looked around him, gazing up at the pillars carved into the walls with perfectly smooth pale stone. The walls and floor as well were free of dust. It was like he was in a majestic castle that had the utmost care. Everything was perfect.

A thought started to creep into Vel's mind, however. It had been bugging him for a while, but nobody had answered him. When they stopped in front of a large pair of doors, he was urged to ask, "Miss Eil-eileth…"

"Eileithyia," the woman pronounces slowly for him. "What would you like?"

"Do you know what happened to my family?" Vel inquired. The gentle look on the woman's face fell and was replaced by a saddened one. The goddess lowered to her knees in front of Vel and grasped both of his hands.

"Yes, I heard what had happened to them," she said. "Vel… I'm so sorry, but your family is dead."

**Peacekeeper**

* * *

As always, any characters making a debut will have an image on my profile if you're interested.


	3. Prologue continued 2

**Enemies of Earth**

_**Ten years later...**_

_**Crete, Greece...**_

Vel watched as the river in front of him flowed smoothly and seemingly endlessly. It was a bright and sunny day, with a few clouds in the sky and birds chirping merrily in the trees nearby.

The lone young man was on his knees and leaned forward to scoop some of the water into his hands and sip it up. It was cold and refreshing for a nice warm day like today.

Vel looked up into the sky. His dark red eyes were narrowed as he watched the branches of the trees started swaying in a gust of wind. The man brushed his jet black bangs out of his face and sat back on the damp grass. Vel's hair had become long, reaching the middle of his back, and was the darkest black of all gods and goddesses. It had a bright, reflective sheen to it that made it look very elegant and well cared for.

"You're late," Vel says out loud abruptly. He turned his head and found a very beautiful woman standing among the trees not for away. The woman had long black hair like Vel's, but didn't have the shine. Her eyes were a dark brown and her skin was perfectly smooth and peachy. She was wearing a green chiton that had a brown sash around her belly, with a loose skirt that reached her knees, a belt around her waist, and a bow and quiver slung to her back.

"I had a last minute chore to take care of," the woman replies with a smile. She walked to Vel and sat beside him.

"You and those chores. What exactly do you always have to do all the time? I had feared that I'll end up alone all day out here," he complains as he picked up a small rock and threw it into the river.

"Well, today it was helping Hermes take a few extra scrolls to the grand library. Tomorrow I'll have to help carry those scrolls back because there's no space for them in there," she explained.

"Are they for Athena?" Vel wondered.

"No. Some of the weavers wanted to try something new for the Autumn Festival."

"So it's a bunch of dress designs and all that?" Vel inquired, to which the woman nodded. "It's only the middle of summer, though..."

The girl shrugged. "They wanted to get a head start. Some of the nymphs said that the new dresses were going to be complicated and it was going to take time to make the perfect cloth." Vel chucked another rock into the river, not saying anything, which made the woman reply apologetically, "I'm sorry that I'm late, Vel. I didn't expect it to happen."

"I never said I was mad at you," Vel replied and turned his head to face the woman. "Shall we get started then, Artemis? We're going to have a lot of game to catch for that autumn feast."

The Goddess of the Moon smiled and stood up. She helped Vel up to his feet as well. "I know a place where we can get a lot of game. Follow me."

The forest around them was quite big. There were many places on the Island of Crete where the two immortals could go hunting. Their agility and speed could get them anywhere within an hour, sprinting at full speed with their endless endurance. Especially for hunters like Vel and Artemis who knew the island very well, it wasn't much of a challenge at all to get around.

Vel's growth had been quick and expected. When he first joined the gods and goddesses in Mount Olympus, he was a boy who knew nothing about the world. The gods pitied him at first and the goddesses were sympathetic. The servant nymphs wouldn't stop and bow to him when they walked by him, nor was he allowed too much freedom. He became a student of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy.

But within a short time, Vel started to change. It was fortunate that they were able to teach him at such a young age. Vel learned proper equity when in the presence of other deities. He had attitude and behaviour engraved into his head within the first year and moved on to studies. With Athena's teaching methods, he learned the history of the Olympians and the different classes among the gods and goddess within two years.

And then, it came to the physical lessons.

Vel was a natural when he first picked up the sword. He flew through the basics, and even quickly took an interest in the bow and arrow. This was when he became Artemis' student and hunter.

Originally it was a little awkward because the goddess was not known to have men within her hunting group. But the two of them became best friends when they learned they had much in common, such as the love of being outdoors and the rush of hunting down wild animals. As soon as Vel was done with battle techniques and developing a hard-core fashion of his own, he became Artemis' student alone.

But just like Athena and the Goddess of the Hearth, Hestia, Artemis had a vow to chastity, which meant it was very difficult for Vel to keep himself tame around the beautiful woman. Despite being a huntress and all around a tough person, Artemis was still very much a woman and did in fact behave in a womanly manor. Yes, she danced and sung, and wore dresses on special occasions, and was still very beautiful. But that wasn't her true nature; the wilds were her calling. That's why she was known far and wide as the Queen of the forest.

And in being the queen, none could outmatch her in her own domain. Artemis was still faster and more nimble than Vel, and she could run through the forest floor with ease. But Vel kept up only because she did not take off at one hundred percent. If not on the leaf-littered ground infested with exposed tree roots, then they were up in the trees hopping from branch to branch and from tree to tree. Vel was much faster there because he had the leg power to jump.

They hunted down prey all day. With only bows and arrows, Vel and Artemis struck down everything that they deemed big enough and carried it back to the grand midnight black chariot that was waiting for them near the edge of the island next to the ocean. Two silvery white pegasi grazed in the grass nearby, staying near the chariot waiting to take flight again. They would carry their game to the chariot and head back out again to look for more.

As they looked through the forest for what must have been the umpteenth time, moving through the trees and cautiously looking for prey, Vel spotted a dark ball of fur on the forest floor. He made gentle movements over the branches in order to not scare a possible game. Once he found a clear sight, Vel could finally see what his target looked like. He smiled with his find and knocked on the hard wood of the tree to get Artemis' attention. The goddess found her way to his side shortly.

"Look at that." Vel pointed into the bush. The goddess's eyes became wide once she found what the man was pointing to. In the bush feeding on some wild fruit was an enormous brown boar. It had two sharp-looking tusks and a body big enough to satisfy Heracles himself.

"Hello beautiful. Where have you been all day?" Artemis murmurs in an impressed tone. "That's a very nice find, Vel."

"I know. That might be the biggest game yet. So how do we tackle this one? Wait, I know," Vel drew an arrow from his quiver. "We take it out at the legs; that way it won't be able to run away. Then we can finish it through the heart."

The goddess shook her head. "No, its hide looks too thick. We're not going to be able to get an arrow to its heart."

Vel's shoulders slumped in disappointment and he withdrew his bow. He pulled out a knife instead. "I got this. I'll take it down and make it quick."

Artemis stared back at the giant boar and thought about the option. A knife was much longer and could penetrate the thick hide easier than the short tip of an arrow. With a simple nod, the woman gave consent and Vel started to creep forward. He tried very carefully to crawl through the tree branches and find his way to the ground without making any sudden noises that might scare off his prey.

Vel took every step cautiously as the forest floor was littered with rocks, twigs and old leaves. He crept up behind it with his knife at the ready, while Artemis remained where she was with an arrow in hand ready to fire. Even for Vel's size and weight, she had to admit that he was moving stealthily very well.

Vel was within just a few steps of the boar when he finally took a wrong step and snapped a twig with just the edge of his foot. The boar raised its head but didn't flee. Vel froze and crouched down if he ever needed to jump at it.

"Hey there, fella," Vel murmurs to the boar. "I'm just going to do something. It should only take a split..."

The boar sudden sprinted away before Vel could finish. The boy leaped forward and jumped onto the wild animal's back, which caused the boar to screech loudly. It took off across into the trees with Vel in tow. Artemis, surprised by the abrupt turn of events, immediately lowered her bow and leapt through the trees after him.

The boar was running fast and Vel struggled to stay on. He sheathed the knife away so he could grab its neck and hold on as best as he could. Yet, the boar didn't stop running. Even when he tried to pull it over by grabbing its tusks, it still tried to squirm, get back up and run again. He had a tough time trying to stay on the wild beast. He couldn't even reach for his knife again without losing grip. But as he continued to try to stay on, he suddenly realized the scared boar was running towards a very dangerous obstacle.

A cliff lied just beyond the trees. There, one would be able to see most of the island, but Vel didn't want to see it while falling to his seeming death—although that assumption did sound quite impossible. He tried to plant his feet on the ground and stop the boar from running any further before they ran off the ledge, but still it would not stop.

With no other choice, Vel reached for an arrow quickly, and immediately thrust the tip directly into the head of the beast where it broke through the bone and penetrated its brain.

As its life seeped out from the newly-inflicted wound, the boar finally stopped and collapsed. Vel and the wild pig rolled over each other until they were just near the cliff's edge. There, he could look to his side and see where two more seconds would have landed him, and he let out a sigh of relief that the seemingly inevitable had been avoided.

When he had regained his breath and composure, he pushed the boar off of him and withdrew the bloodied arrow from its head, just as Artemis caught up to him and ran to his side.

"Are you alright, Vel?" Artemis asked. Vel huffed as he sat against the side of the beast and blew a stray leaf out of his bangs.

"I've seen better days," the man replied. "To bad he won't be seeing any more," he adds as he pats the underbelly of the boar. "Quite the catch, though."

The goddess shook her head, but a smile made her made curl up. She pulled a few twigs from his hair and brushed his bangs from his face. Vel smiled back at her. "Indeed it is. Let's take it back to the chariot."

Vel picked up the boar by the legs, even though Artemis offered to carry it at first, he said he was well enough to do it himself. He heaved the boar over his shoulders and they walked back to the chariot down at the shore. They both agreed that they had done enough hunting for today and started to hitch the two pegasi to the midnight wagon. As a result of Vel's apparent fear of heights that had been confirmed long ago, he sat down on the floor of the chariot with his head down. Artemis yanked on the reins and commanded her steeds to take flight.

... ... ...

The Spring Festival was one of the four annual festivals out of the whole year. Long ago, there used to be no such thing. There was only the Summer Solstice, which was the day the sun reached its highest point in the sky. But ever since the creation of the seasons—due to the Goddess of Harvest, Demeter's neglect of the fields whenever Persephone was in the Underworld—and the thousands of years of living, new celebrations such as the Spring Festival had been created.

At the end of each season, the residence of Olympus got together and celebrated the arrival of the new season with a big feast and a dance out in the grand garden. The large dining room was decorated to match the coming season and the garden was maintained on the night of the feast and dance. Summer Solstice was still the biggest celebration of the four, renamed Summer Festival for convenience sake.

Vel was not allowed to attend these Olympian parties because he was not of age until after the most recent Winter Festival. The gods and goddess did not tolerate that those under adult age to be anywhere near wine or alcohol. It didn't make any sense to Vel, but he was glad that the day had finally came that he would get to enjoy a good time along with everyone else.

He heard from Apollo that some of the nymphs skilled in the weaving arts were making something for Vel to wear to the festival. He didn't know what to do, having never been to an Olympian celebration before. He only knew that a nymph he had slept with once was working on the dress, so he could do nothing but only imagine what it was going to look like.

Artemis had informed him of the simple procedure: they were all expected to meet at the dining hall at sunset, eat, and then go out into the garden and dance the night away. The meal was for the Olympians specifically, but other deities in residence on the mountains were welcomed to come as well.

The day before the festival, Vel received his clothes. He tried them on and found he liked what he saw in the mirror on the wall in his bedroom. It was a simple black shirt with an exomis over it—as black as his hair—with a sparkling silver scarf wrapping around his shoulders and left to hang over his back. A black tunic reached down to his knees and his feet and ankles were wrapped in golden laced sandals. That was it. No fancy jewellery. No large piece of cloth that he would have to pick up and carry around. It was simple and light.

The day of the festival came and Olympus was busy with people making final preparations. Vel spent the day wandering around the halls of Olympus as everyone he knew was busy getting ready for tonight. He had no special chores of his own, so Vel thought about what he would do to pass the time. He could go read a book from the great library, or he could go down to the surface of Earth and roam around the land.

He had talked to Dionysus earlier, the God of Wine and festivities. These parties were right up his alley, so he was excited for it.

"I'll make sure to get you as drunk as I can!" he joked, patting Vel hard on the back. He appreciated the enthusiasm coming from the god, but Vel wasn't sure about becoming wasted at his first party.

When the twin deities left to go move their celestial bodies in the sky, Vel went to go put on his dress and walk to the dining hall. There, a grand feast was waiting for him. The table was stacked with delicious-looking delicacies of nearly every type. Some gods were already sitting at the table. Vel took his seat and waited for the rest of the guests to arrive.

He looked around the dining hall, taking in all the decorations. Banners of green, yellow and sky blue were hung around the pillars and over the entrances; the colours of spring. Tables were set up on the side with nymphs and satyrs ready to serve if someone requested a mean. If the gods weren't sitting at the table, they were standing with an acquaintance of one or more, chatting before the feast officially began. Vel felt sort of awkward and distant from everyone sitting by himself, occasionally taking a sip of the water from his chalice. There wasn't anyone there that he knew yet.

That changed when he felt a presence approach him from behind. He turned around and found Artemis smiling at him and his jaw dropped at the sight of her character.

The Goddess of the Moon was in a midnight black Greek himation dress from her chest down to her ankles with dark ribbons wrapping around her arms and leaving her shoulders completely bare. Every edge along her dress had a silver glittering pattern on it. Resting on her chest was a silver necklace the shape of a crescent moon, and her long black hair was brushed to smoothness and perfection.

"Are you going to say something?" Artemis asked, laughing at Vel's reaction to her dress. The man shook his head.

"Artemis... you look... absolutely beautiful!" Vel exclaimed. The goddess smiled, a wild blush appearing on her face.

"Why thank you, Vel. You look very good yourself."

"Th-thank you."

Artemis gestured to the seat next to him. "Is this seat taken?"

"What? No! By all means, go right ahead." Vel watched as Artemis took her seat. He noticed a faint smell of perfume surrounding the goddess; fresh forest greenery. "You smell very nice as well."

"Thank you. You forgot to put perfume on," Artemis points out without a break in her speech. Vel looked away in embarrassment.

"Yeah, I kind of did. I wasn't thinking about it," he admitted.

Eventually all of the seats were full and Zeus officiated the start of the feast. The food was delicious. Vel hadn't quite tasted anything like it. The hall was busy with chatter and laughter as the night went on. He didn't talk too much to the other deities in the room except for Artemis, but he appreciated that his presence was acknowledged by the others. Somehow, having the moon goddess there to talk helped him keep calm.

After the meal, they headed out to the grand garden that was prepared for the dance. The garden was lit up with candle and torch light and the fountains were running smoothly with water. Everyone begun to dance as music started to play by musicians on the mountain, including Apollo.

"Artemis?" Vel faced the goddess and held out his hand to her. She smiled and rolled her eyes. Vel only chuckled. "Come on. I know that you dance."

"Very well," she complied, taking his hand. Immediately Vel pulled her around, making her twirl and move along with him.

The night went on, but neither Vel nor Artemis went to find a different partner. Their dancing would go without pause. The other dancing couples around them didn't seem to take notice of how much fun they were having together. Both of them had smiles on their faces as they watched each other's movements, taking the proper steps that matched the pace of the music. Vel guided Artemis as she twirled around, and she would take his hand and face him, those glittering brown orbs of hers capturing his eye.

She twirled one time, pulling her arm around her as she spun into Vel. She stepped back into him and looked up at him. He looked down and saw her face lighting up with a giddy smile. Her eyes reflected the lights around them and gave them that sparkly appearance. Vel put his arm around her waist as they continued to move around the gardens.

Late into the night, people started to grow tired and leave the party. Vel and the goddess were some of the last people to leave. They were both exhausted, but their hearts were brimming with energy. Vel couldn't recall a night where he had had this much fun, so tonight was a night to remember.

And spending it with his closest friend was a bonus.

"Whew! I'm spent!" the goddess sighs as she sat down on a park bench. Vel sat down next to her and laid back on the backrest of the bench, letting his arms rest on the top of it. He glanced up at the moon and closed his eyes.

"Yeah. This was a fun night." He turned to look at the woman next to him. "I'm glad I got to spend it with you, Artemis."

"I am as well. It's good to make your last days here fun while they last, right? You'll be leaving in a few days."

At this, the smile disappeared from Vel's face. He turned away and looked down, exhaling a long, drawn out sigh. Artemis raised an eyebrow in wonder.

"Yes, I will be. For the first time since I knew I was told I was a god, I'll be going back home." He leaned forward on his seat to let his bangs hang over his face.

"Why are you so upset about it? Aren't you happy to have a little freedom?" she asked.

"It's not that. It's that I wake up every day and I see everyone's faces. Most of them. That's what I'm gonna miss; not seeing you guys any more. I'm... nervous about going back."

Artemis thought to herself something to say to Vel to comfort him. She knew that it was going to be difficult for him, going back to the land where he once lived as a mortal. She still remembered the day when he first arrived. Vel cried for days and was upset for many more about the death of the mortal family that had been killed while taking care of him. She could remember his shrill wails of pain and sadness. She could remember his depression. It sent a cold chill down her back.

When she finally thought of something, Artemis moved herself closer and put her arm around Vel's shoulders. "I understand that. But let me tell you something; you're not alone. You never were. You have us. If you feel that someone needs to go with you, don't be afraid to ask. It's time to face what you've feared for so long, Vel."

The god lifted his head to look at her. Artemis' eyebrows were curved in a worried furrow and her eyes held care. But a small, reassuring smile was on her lips; the same smile that appeared on her confident face whenever they talked about something. When he saw that, Vel gradually smiled back. He sat up straight and brushed his hair out of his face.

"You're right. I shouldn't worry. I'm just scared that I won't be able to stay out there for long." He turned to Artemis and asked shyly, "Would you... be willing to leave with me?"

The goddess stared back at him in surprise. "Me leave Olympus with you?"

"Not forever. It's just until I get used to it. I'll be lonely out there, you know. Besides, we both like being in the forest anyway," he reasoned.

Artemis couldn't deny that, but she never expected him to ask her to accompany him as he left Olympus to explore the mortal world. She couldn't see why she shouldn't. There was no harm in leaving for a little while. She too was afraid of what would happen if Vel all of a sudden left. She and he were best friends. If she wasn't performing a duty or wasn't with any of the other gods, then she was with him, talking or on Earth hunting. Being with Vel was what made Artemis' day full of activity. There was always something to do.

"Well?" Vel pipes after her drawn out silence. The goddess looked up to his curious eyes. She smiled nodded.

"If that's what you think is right, then I will go with you," she conceded. A wide smile grew on Vel's face. He pulled her in to a hug, wrapping his arms around her waist and back and letting his chin rest on her shoulder. Artemis put her arms around him too, while a slight blush appeared on her cheeks.

"Thank you... so much..." he whispers into her ear. Artemis sighed as a smile formed on her lips.

"You're welcome, Vel. Just remember that I'm always there for you."

Vel pulled away and smiled brightly at her. He then stood up and offered his hand to her. "We should turn in. It's very late."

The Goddess of the Moon nodded and took his outstretched hand. They walked back to the palace, which by this time was empty. Almost everyone was already in bed and sleep. It was just them in the dark and cold corridors of the kingdom.

But neither of them minded the silence in the air, just as long as they had each other.

_End of Prologue…_

**Peacekeeper**

* * *

As always, any characters making a debut will have an image on my profile if you're interested.


	4. Masked Hero: Chapter 1

**Part One: Masked Hero**—_Nearly a century later, Velinda finds himself stuck in an old warehouse in the suburbs of a busy city. His only connection to the world lies in a mortal girl who hides a deep crush for him. Just as he begins to accept his current way of life, his predicted future starts to approach him…_

**Enemies of Earth**

_**Ninety years later...**_

_**Calgary, Alberta...**_

A phone started buzzing on the drawer, near where Vel's head was lying on the pillows. It startled him awake as the buzzing was incredibly loud for his ears. Annoyed, he reached for the touch screen device and put it on snooze, and then promptly let his head fall back into the pillows.

Eventually in the next minute the phone went off again and Vel urged himself to get up. He brushed his grown hair out of his face and slowly climbed out of bed. He tiredly grabbed a black t-shirt, a pair of loose pants and a belt from the closet and slowly put it on, looking at the mirror and closing his eyes briefly. Gradually, his body started to glow and he began to change forms. It was a tough process and it didn't feel good. It almost made him a little sick and he stopped his focusing abruptly. Vel's dark red eyes opened and took in the image on the mirror.

He was not in the appearance he was aiming for. Instead of the cool leather football jacket he had once seen in a magazine, he was in a simple muscle shirt with shirts and his long hair was a strange bright red colour. His body shape hadn't changed and neither had his face.

Sighing in frustration, he tried to revert back to his original form, and even _that_ took a few tries. Once he figured himself out, he just put on a black trench coat with a zipper up the middle and a belt wrapped around the waist and walked out of the room.

He had found this large warehouse not long ago and was busy trying to clean the place up a bit. He found out that the warehouse used to be a large mechanics shop, as there were three large bays that could fit two cars. To his right was where all his furniture and appliances were. It was the only place in the building that was actually cleaned up and fit for living. There was still a bunch of metal junk piled in the corners of the building and workbenches that still needed to be moved out of the way. He flipped his thigh-long hair back and climbed into the big four-by-four truck that was parked in the first bay. With a push of the button, the large door in front of him opened and he drove out into the rain.

Being more than a century old, Vel had learned a lot of things about the world. After leaving Olympus behind him and his good friend Artemis—which after a few weeks of being in Greece together, they finally bid farewell to each other—he travelled around Greece and eventually hitched a ship ride to the other side of the world called America. There, after a few decades of traveling around the country, Vel finally made a home in Calgary, Alberta no more than three years ago. The warehouse was abandoned when he found it, so he was free to use the building as he pleased.

As a friend once told him before he left Olympus, he had to learn how to change forms at will. According to his earlier attempt, Vel could say he still had a long way to go. It wasn't much of a problem to him. He still looked very much like a god and still stood out in a crowd, judging by the way others would look at him as he walked by in the streets. He would flash a grin at pretty women in the streets and maybe even talk to one on occasion. But having good looks didn't mean that Vel was happy. He wasn't living in a luxurious mansion or an expensive house in the residence of Calgary. He was living in a rust bucket. The only thing good he owned was the powerful turbocharged truck and the other sports car waiting in the shop.

Against advice, Vel had gone and made friends with a few mortal people. Among these people was a girl that frequently visited Vel. She was just a schoolgirl in her graduating year whom he had met one day.

... ... ...

_**Two years ago…**_

Three girls were walking down the sidewalk in downtown. They had just come from the mall and had a bag or two of the things they bought. They were the spitting image of stereotypical school girls who liked to hang out a lot, with their flashy purses, their spunky short shorts and skirts. One of them even had a peach beret on her head.

This girl, with maroon, wavy long hair, gray eyes, wearing a labelled t-shirt and shorts, was the target of a poor thug eyeing them just a few feet behind. He wore a hoodie over his head and the collar of his shirt pulled up to the tip of his nose. The purse, swaying back and forth in the girl's arm as they walked, was the target. He timed himself just right so he could easily grab the bag as it swung out.

A few anticipated seconds later, he made his move and scored.

"Hey!" the girls shouted, and then began to panic when they realized they had been robbed. They started giving pursuit, but the thief had gotten an early lead and was easily getting away.

The thug turned to a back alley, going for an easy escape, but was cut short. He was suddenly hit with a metal garbage can lid in the face and nearly performed a back flip, losing a hold on the purse he stole. The purse landed on the ground where it was picked up just as the three girls caught up to him.

"Asshole!" the beret-topped girl snarls and kicked the thief in the head. She looked up as the man who picked up her bag held it out to her, holding the metal lid by the handle like it was a shield. Her jaw dropped at what her eyes beheld.

"I presume this is yours?" Vel asked. All three girls looked at him in shock, but it was the beret-topped girl who stuttered to reply first.

"Y-y-yeah, it is. T-thank you so much!" she replies nervously and accepted her bag from her saviour. Vel tossed the lid back on the garbage bin, landing perfectly on the top. The thug at their feet groaned. The young man who saved the girl's bag knelt down to the thief and turned his face so he could look at him in the eye.

"If I catch you doing that again, I'll push your shit in," he warns with a stern and intimidating voice. The thug nodded slightly with eyes wide and brows furrowed in fear. "Good. Now get outta my face."

The hoodie thief scrambled to get to his feet and ran out of sight, leaving the man and three girls in silence. The maroon-haired of the three turned back to the man, wanting to say something to the gorgeous human being who saved her precious bag.

"Thank you again, f-for saving my stuff," she fumbled to say. Her two friends turned back and their eyes started checking out the man from head to toe. Vel stood tall; almost seven feet by now. His precious hair still had that glorious sheen and his face was still chiselled and smooth despite the lesser maintenance. His body was much bigger with muscles as well and his eyes were as sharp as ever.

"No problem. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, I guess," Vel responded humbly. The girl felt like she should say something more. Her friends were starting to grow mischievous smirks on their lips while they looked him over. She knew what they were thinking, and she was not about to let herself be beaten.

"I'm Madison. Madison Jersey," she told him, holding out her hand to the young man. He smiled and took her hand and shook it. Madison could feel the strength in his body just by touching his hand.

"My name's Velinda, Hillis," the boy replied.

"Velinda. Wow, that's a unique name."

Vel burst into a fit of light laughter. "My name's been called a lot of things, but never unique. Thank you."

"Oh, you're welcome! So are you new here? I've never seen you before."

Vel nodded. "Yes, I just moved in not too long ago."

"Really? So you live here now? Cool," Madison replied. Her friends were now glaring at her back as they watched Madison try to talk to Vel. The girl looked down nervously, rapidly trying to think of something else to say. Quickly, she conjured, "So I guess I'll be seeing you around some time?"

"I guess so." Vel nodded, gave them a little bow and walked away. The three girl's eyes followed where he went as he walked down the sidewalk, his long raven hair flying like a smooth cape behind him.

After all tension in her body loosened, Madison nearly fainted onto her friend.

... ... ...  


_**Present day...**_

Madison was a strong girl. Despite her small size, she had a strong spirit and a sweet character. Vel admired her for her never-give-up attitude and she always looked for the good in people. Vel was not dense as to realize that the girl was smitten with him, but Vel tried to hold it off. He wasn't quite sure of getting involved with a mortal girl was a good idea.

Despite that, Madison knew who Vel was. One day she surprised him with an old article dating back to the nineteen-twenties around his time that talked about the mysterious attack on a small town somewhere in Greece. Hundreds of people were dead as a result, and one person was missing.

A young Greek boy with the last name of Hillis.

Vel had no choice but to explain his origins at Olympus to the girl. At first, she didn't say anything. It was hard for her to believe that a Greek god had appeared right in front of her and had become her friend. Then she became upset that he would keep such a secret from him. She wanted proof. So Vel did what he normally did; he got a hold of a knife and slit his wrist open. It shocked Madison that he would do that to himself, but then she saw the golden blood that poured out of the open wound. She began to believe.

Since then, Madison had done a bit of research so she could understand Vel a little better. She had learned what Greek Mythology was and became somewhat informed of the world Vel grew up in. The mortal girl then changed. She became interested in him and asked him lots of questions and how he believed the world worked, and then compared it to her 'science'. Today he would go and visit the girl at her school again, Crescent Heights. He did this sometimes when he had nothing else to do. Her school didn't mind strangers coming into the building, just as long as he didn't disturb classes.

When he got there, he quickly ran inside to avoid becoming soaked by the rain. There, he noticed that some classes were filing into the theatre. Vel was curious, so he decided to join them. The students slowly entered the theatre and took their seats. He stayed near the entrance and waited. The lights dimmed and everyone hushed. He then realized that a play was about to start, and sure enough people came on stage and began to act. It was a big play, as there was a choir and music band waiting to start their part on the side of the stage.

As the play got to a dramatic part, the music finally kicked in. Instruments began playing and the choir started to sing in a soft synced tone. A certain spotlight turned on and Vel's eyes popped open.

Madison was sitting on a stool, separate from the rest of the band with a violin in her hand. Smoothly, she started to play and sync up with the rest of the band. Her notes began to outshine the rest of the band in the room and she practically took the lead. The play went on for another hour or so with breaks in between, and once it was finished everyone came out and bowed and the audience clapped. Madison and Vel made eye contact for a brief moment and they smiled at each other.

After the play the students had to go back to the rest of their class. Vel waited just outside the front doors, where an overhang protected him from the rain.

He felt a tug on his coat and looked down. There he found his friend looking up at him with a smile.

"Hi," Madison greeted him.

He replied, "Hey. How was your day?"

"It was okay. Yours?"

"Meh. Alright, I guess." Vel pauses and looks back out at the rain. "You never told me you played the violin before."

"I know. I wanted to surprise you. So what do you think of my skills?" Madison inquired.

"You're very good at it. How long have you being playing the violin, now?"

"Oh, about some time before you showed up. I usually play it here at school when I have band class, but I play one at home too, sometimes," the girl replied. She leaned up against Vel's side and closed her eyes. Vel's frame was much bigger and he was taller than her by almost two feet. That made him a figure to look up to, literally and figuratively. "Do you have any free time, tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"Yeah. Band practice after school was cancelled today, so I was wondering if you wanted to go into town for the night. Maybe we can catch a movie or something?"

Vel too didn't have much to do. His recent days were spent on roaming around town aimlessly and cleaning up the warehouse. He thought it was about time to do something else for a change, so he nodded to Madison's offer.

"Sure, I guess. I'm not busy." He looked down and saw the girl smiling at his answer. She poked him in the side and walked to the doors and waved back to him.

"I'll see you then!" she said before walking back into the school. Vel waved back and watched her disappear.

... ... ...

A slim, red-haired woman in a loose purple dress and a crown resembling walls of a kingdom walked into the palace. Her soft, curly hair stretched over her back and her strapless dress revealed one of her legs. Over her eyes was a blindfold, preventing people from ever seeing her eyes. She walked into the middle of the room where the Twelve Olympians sat. All eyes were on her.

"Goddess Tyche, for what reason do you call this meeting?" Zeus inquires in a stern voice.

"I come before all of you to deliver dire news," the Goddess of Luck spoke. Despite being blindfolded, her head tilted up to Zeus like she knew exactly where he was. "Being a deity of fortune and destiny, it is my duty to predict the fate of cities and homes. But something struck me in one of my fortune sessions. Our whole world is in danger." She says this in a desperate voice. The gods and goddesses around her knew that if Tyche saw something dangerous, that they had to take the matter seriously. "I saw a dark figure, standing before a small light. Our only hope… enveloped by this strange and powerful darkness. This light must become stronger, so it can fight the darkness that threatens our world because already, there are several blots of energy that disgrace our earth by walking on it."

"What she says is no mere prediction," Apollo announced. "Helios reported to me that strange creatures are starting to appear on the surface. The mortals dealt with the first few that appeared, but they are starting to appear in places where they can hide and are growing in number. Apparently they are heading towards something on the other side of the world, to where the mortals call America."

Nobody spoke as they let the information sink in. Through all of their heads ran the images and memories of a very similar event that took place long ago. Tyche waited patiently for someone to respond on a course of action, because she was fairly certain that all the gods and goddesses knew what she was talking about.

"The Zodrac…" Poseidon finally murmured, tightening the grip on his trident.

"It seems so," Zeus agreed. "Though it is strange to me why they would all go in one direction. It hadn't happened before. Is there a sanctuary of some sort that they are all gathering at?"

"No."

All heads turned to Athena.

"It's not?" Zeus asked.

"The only thing that's over there," Athena replied, "is our hero. Velinda needs to be warned and we need to start dealing with these creatures where we find them."

"Of course."

"If I may, my lord Zeus," Tyche intervened. "I wish to go find Velinda and tell him what I saw for myself. And with your permission, Lady Athena, I'd like to take your companion Nike with me should we ever encounter any of these strange creatures."

Athena nodded sharply. "If Lord Zeus agrees, you have my permission."

Tyche and Athena turned to Zeus as he appeared to be thinking about what was proposed to him. He nodded not much later.

"Go quickly. Warn Velinda of the things you saw. The sooner he is warned the sooner we can start to be rid of the monstrosities that walk on our world. Go!"

Tyche nodded and hastily walked away from the Pantheon. Still on her throne, a certain goddess with dark hair wished she had been going instead.

**Peacekeeper**


	5. Masked Hero: Chapter 2

**Enemies of Earth**

The weather had finally settled down that evening, leaving puddles in the potholes of the uneven roads. On the sidewalk, Madison awaited her secret crush to come and pick her up.

For the occasion, she wore a black strapless dress that had a skirt that stretched down to just right above her knees. There was a big fancy bow that wrapped around her torso and her hair was done perfectly straight and was hanging over her back. And of course, she never left home without her peach beret. There was absolutely no reason to wear the dress, but the eager girl wanted to make an impression. Technically, she _was _going on a date.

Madison heard an engine roar from down the road and turned her head. A pair of headlights was coming her way, and they were so bright that she had to shield her eyes. As the car got closer, Madison could tell the car was exotic. Its engine was soft, yet powerful, and the silhouette was so low to the ground. Something expensive was coming her way. The car switched to its low beam headlights and Madison could finally lower her hand to see the approaching car.

A slick, metallic black Lamborghini pulled up right in front of her. The door popped open in a scissor fashion and a man stepped out. Madison was even more shocked to see that it was Vel who stepped out of the car and walked around until he stood by her side.

"What's with the dress? We're just going to a movie," Vel said, looking up and down at her figure.

"What's with the car?" Madison exclaims back at him. "Vel, where did you get the Lamborghini? You don't have the money for this!"

"You're right; I don't. But Hephaestus does. He shipped it to me all the way from Lemnos Island after he made a few adjustments himself."

"Such as?"

"Replacing the engine. He put a generator in and made the whole thing run on electricity. That way I don't have to stop and pay for gas money." He then murmured, "Because only the Fates know that I'm running low for the big four-by-four already." He looked back at Madison. "So are you all prettied up and ready to go? Why did you dress up? Geez, you're making me feel bad."

The girl laughed. "I just felt like it. Come on, let's go!"

Vel smiled as he watched the mortal girl climb into the car and then got into the car himself. The car was smooth as he pulled away from the curb and drove away. Madison could feel the strength of the engine through the seat and gazed all around the interior.

"Ever been in a car like this?" Vel asked.

"No, never. How long have you had this car?" Madison replied.

"Just a few days. I was waiting for a good day to show it off," he told her. "The city's roads aren't the best to drive on, especially for a car like this. But I gotta get it around at some point."

Madison looked back at the dashboard, running her hand along the shiny surface. "This is just what a god would drive."

"Maybe, but I'm not exactly of godly status anymore."

The girl rolled her eyes. "Come on, Vel. You're a god through and through no matter what you think."

"Living in a rusting shithole with no way of earning myself money? Other gods would have a billion dollars right now. The only reason why I have a truck with a full tank is because your parents agreed to help. The insurance on this thing is being paid for by Hephaestus from the other side of the world. The warehouse went out of business years before I found it, so the city basically thinks that no one would take up residence in there."

"Vel, quit degrading yourself!" Madison exclaimed, grabbing his arm that was holding onto the gear shifter. "You don't have to be a millionaire to have a good life, you know? If I were you, I'd be happy that I don't have to pay anything. You're free to do whatever you want." Vel took his eyes off the road to look the girl in the eye. "You don't have to own a big mansion to impress anyone. You're just you, and that means a lot to me."

The man smiled and quickly put his eyes back on the road. Her words had worked in making him feel a little better. "Thanks... it's good to know someone still appreciates me."

"Are you kidding me? I'm always thankful when you're around." The girl smiled back at him. Vel turned into an exit that led to the main highway and sped up to meet the traffic flow. Vel glanced back at the girl for a moment and only then realized how good she looked in her dress.

... ... ...

Two women approached the partially abandoned building, looking around for any evidence that the occupant might still be around. The lights were out, which was a clue that he wasn't. One of the women was holding a finely made torch of scorched metal, with the flames on top radiating light brightly and illuminated a very wide area all around them.

The woman's face looked quite young in appearance, with pinkish cheeks and lips as rosy as her hair. She did, despite her face and apparent short height, have the body and bust of a fully mature woman. Her amazingly wild and bright blue eyes stood out, and the white skirt and shirt that was all one piece. It was fashioned with a loose belt over her waist with a sheath for the torch on the back, and she had the classic Greek white leather sandals on her perfectly smooth feet. The most unique feature of the Goddess of Victory was that she had a pair of white feathery wings on her back, right where her shoulder blades were located.

The goddess held out her torch in front of her as she pulled back her red curly bangs from her face to inspect the rusted logo of the building name.

"Garret's Garage Warehouse?" Nike questioned. The red brick walls of the building were stained and had streaks of grime coming all the way down from the roof, and the windows were covered in grunge. The goddess let her hips fling to the side as the she looked at the building sceptically. "More like Garret's Garbage Stink house. Is this really where Vel lives now?"

The other goddess, Tyche, had her hand pressed flat against the building, not responding to Nike's question.

"Lady Tyche?" Nike asked.

"Yes, Vel lives here now. He's been here for just a few years," Tyche responded.

"What? How do you…?"

"I could sense it through the building. Vel's been here for precisely two years and three months."

Nike looked at Tyche with her jaw agape. She had forgotten about Tyche's ability to see the future and past of a city and its individual buildings. She shook her head of her surprise and replied, "Ok. So Vel isn't here, then?"

"I believe not," the goddess replied with disappointment.

"Can you not determine where he went to?" Nike asked.

"Not by standing out here. Maybe if we look inside we can figure that out." Tyche walked to the door and tried the knob, but it wouldn't open. "It's locked."

"Let me," Nike insisted. Tyche stepped back and allowed the Goddess of Victory to aim the butt of her torch at the knob. The torch transformed and became a staff three times the length of its original form with a sharp tip and two short blades at the end. Nike easily sliced the knob off and pushed open the door. The torch reverted back to its original state and the two women walked into the building. The lights were off, but Nike's torch was bright enough to eliminate that problem. She set her torch down on one of the empty workbenches and they began searching for clues.

"It looks like Vel was here not that long ago. There's still water in the sink," Tyche observes as she rubs the said liquid between her fingers. She stepped out of the kitchen area and moved the curtain that covered the entrance to the bunker aside. "This must be where he sleeps."

"I don't think Vel would appreciate us looking in there," Nike told her. She turned to the car bays and noticed the truck sitting there alone. "I always thought that Vel had two cars."

The Goddess of Luck stepped to her side. "Yes, I think he does. I remember Hephaestus complaining about shipping an expensive car of some sort to Vel overseas. Maybe Vel's taken that car out somewhere right now."

Nike nodded. Suddenly, they both heard something suddenly hit the ground and turned to the noise. "Uh-oh," Nike piped and quickly ran to retrieve her torch.

But it was too late. The flame of Nike's torch was so hot that it had melted through the metal top of the workbench, leaving a smouldering mess and the goddess's smoking torch on the cement floor.

"Oops."

... ... ...  


The movie had been good. It was a mix of mystery and action; the main hero living in a normal world until somebody comes along and tells him he's someone else, followed by a big adventure to find out who he really is. It included a fight an aerial fight, a battle on the road, a big city fight, and a bunch of other actions scenes in various locations. Madison knew Vel had chosen it because he thought the central character reminded him of himself. It wasn't really her type of movie, but she was glad she was with Vel to watch it. The night had gone on too quick for her, however, so she decided she wanted to walk around town for a bit and convinced Vel to join her. There would be no way that she would want to walk around alone anyway.

As they walked, they talked about what they were each doing, making small conversation as they walked around the blocks. Madison filled in Vel about her musical choice and why she had wanted to learn the violin in the first place. According to her schedule, her band class included trips to see other famous orchestras perform live right here in the USA. Madison had hopes of traveling the world one day, so getting into band for its tours was a good start.

Then Vel told her about his warehouse project. He wanted to get around to cleaning the warehouse and some point and make it more liveable. Since he had so much time on his hands, he said that he had better get to it soon. They gossiped about other little things as they entered an empty park and walked along the sidewalk. It was a nice park, with a bridge over a canal and a small lake with a fountain spewing up water in the middle. The trees surrounded them from every side and casted large shadows on the ground.

Vel looked up at the moon from a clearing in the sky and stopped walking. Madison turned around and saw him with his eyes drawn to the celestial body up in the sky. She knew about Vel's close friendship with the goddess resembled with the moon. She felt she had to know what was going on between him and her before she could try and win Vel's affections for herself.

"Do you see each other often?" Madison asked, cutting open the sheet of silence around them. Vel glanced at her before looking back up.

"Occasionally. Not as much anymore because she's on the other side of the planet now. I haven't seen such of anyone for a while, actually," Vel answered. "They're used to staying in Greece. It's not often that you see a Greek deity visit the other side of the world, you know."

"So then why did you come here? You never told me that."

Vel was silent for a while and didn't answer her question right away. He was thinking back to the cause of his decision to travel to America. He remembered seeing a promotional poster somewhere in the streets back in the nineteen-sixties, with an American flag on it and a big happy family in the foreground. He remembered reading 'where hopes and dreams come true' in big, black and fancy letters. He remembered thinking about what new lands he could explore and what new adventures awaited him there, so he became a stowaway on a ship sailing for the New World.

A call of his name brought Vel out of his long train of thoughts and he looked back at Madison waiting for his answer, so he finally said, "I saw it on a poster. I thought about what new land there was to explore and wanted to know what the other side of the world looked like. So I told the Olympians that I was going and they said 'if you go, don't expect us to follow you'. So I went anyway."

"So you're the only one over here?" Madison continued with her questions.

"No. There are a few nymphs who made their way over here as well to check what it's like. Do you know about all the wild plants and vegetation that are unique to America starting to appear in Western Europe?"

"Yeah. We talked about it in biology class. My teacher thinks it has something to do with the change in the wind currents. Is that something caused by the gods as well?"

Vel nodded. "I imagine so. Like I said, I haven't talked to anyone for a long time so I don't know what the change is about." Vel walked over to a nearby park bench and sat down. Madison joined him.

"Why do you think it's happening?" the girl asked. The man shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know. A new way of preparing for a ceremony, I guess?" Vel proposed. "Maybe it's just for no reason. Nymphs usually follow the orders of those who treat them well, so maybe someone had them come and retrieve foreign species back to Greece."

"Oh, so the gods are too good to come over here and get it themselves?"

"Probably." Vel chuckled and wagged his finger in warning. "But be careful what you say, because they will hear you."

"What would they do to me if I did? Would you protect me?" Madison inquired, waiting to see what Vel would answer. She didn't expect him to answer quickly, but he did.

"I would," he responded. The girl looked at him amazed. "Because an insult should not be punishable by death," he continued. "See, the gods don't take insults lightly. If you make fun of them in any shape or form, they're gonna make sure you don't stick around. An innocent and completely random girl like you doesn't deserve to visit Hades, especially at such a young age too."

The girl smiled with a bright blush on her face. "Really? You would protect me against your friends?"

"You are my friend, Madison," Vel replied, which was successful in making the girl's heart beat even faster. Silently, she tried to control her breathing and calm her pulse because of how touch she felt by his words.

But before she could say anything, there was a loud bang and thump among the trees in front of them. The ground began to shake as something took massive footsteps and pushed its way through the forest around them. The shadows concealed most of it from view, but both Vel and Madison could see something pierce the darkness in front of them.

Two gleaming yellow eyes.

The being before them finally emerged from the cover of the trees and charged straight ahead toward the two of them. Vel picked up Madison and jumped out of the way just before the bench and the area around it was dug up by the long, sharp horn of the beast, completely demolishing it. He put the mortal girl down and told her to hide in the trees before he turned back around to face the monster.

His eyes widened. Of all the mythical monsters he had heard of and seen in books, Vel had never gazed upon anything quite like what was standing in front of them. The thing looked like a boney canine with three sharp claws on each paw and a long sharp horn on its snout. Its nostrils flared as it stared Vel down and growled loud enough to make even the air around it vibrate with sound waves. Vel stood still as he and the beast had a stare down for a few seconds, all the while Vel thought, what in the world was this thing? And how did it find them?

The monster barked, which was probably loud enough to shatter a few nearby windows. Vel flinched and covered his ringing ears from the bark, only to look up when a shadow began looming over him. The beast was upon him and opened its razor-sharp teeth to take a bite out of him. Vel moved out of the way just in time. He punched the furry jaw of the beast, but that hardly did a thing. The beast took a swing next and smashed Vel into a tree truck. He realized as he groaned that he bit his tongue brutally and he could taste his own blood.

As he got to his feet, the monster charged right at him. Vel jumped out of the way and the tree was completely knocked over by the creature. He started to run through the park with the beast following close behind him. He ran over the stone bridge that was built over the creek, but the monster smashed right through that. He tried to lose it by zigzagging through the trees, but the beast was simply too massive and bulldozed through everything that was in its way.

Vel stopped as he finally thought to himself; why should he be running? He was a god! Gods do not run from anything.

He turned around to face the beast and saw it running right at him. Vel widened his stance and planted his feet firmly to the ground, holding up his hands and bracing himself. Once the canine came within reach, Vel grabbed its snout and drove all its running momentum into the ground. The force pushed him back, but Vel dug his feet and legs into the ground so he could stay up and stop the monster completely, while the beast collapsed to the ground.

Vel gasped and leaned on the furry snout, trying to regain his breath. He looked up just as the monster's crystal yellow eyes shot open and the man groaned in frustration.

The monster suddenly became animated again and threw Vel up into the air. He flew back down into the trees, broke through the branches and fell into the small pond below. He was beat at this point, so tired that he couldn't even swim back up to the surface and get out of the pool. It was a good thing he was immortal or else he would have died drowning.

But then something started to appear over the water. There was a bright light that shone over the water. A figure dived into the pond and swam down to him. Vel had to look twice and blink because he realized the figure had wings, and when it reached out to touch him, the feeling felt so familiar.

The figure pulled him up to the water's surface and dragged him out onto the damp grass nearby. Vel coughed up the water from his lungs and gasped for precious air. When he felt a hand on his shoulder, he looked up and met the eyes of the other person.

Her wild blue eyes.

"Nike?" Vel inquired. The red-haired woman smiled, pulling him forward and kissing him. Her white wings spread wide open in conjunction with her sudden passion for him. The kiss ended with both of them having run out of breath and were left gasping for air again.

"Hello, Vel. It's been a long time," Nike said to him, a bright smile through her dampened bangs.

"Yeah, it has been," Vel replied, still disoriented from the kiss. "What are you doing here?"

"I came here to help you," the Goddess of Victory says as she got up to her feet and helped Vel up.

"But I didn't pray for help..."

They both heard a roar and turned their heads. In the forest of scattered, spaced out trees in the park, another blindfolded woman with a silver sceptres in her hands was preoccupied with the monster that Vel was fighting. She cleverly used the trees to avoid being hit and used them for cover to trick her foe before striking. The end of the staff transformed into a long sharp blade as the woman thrust the staff into the foreleg of the monster, spilling red blood onto the grass.

"Is that Tyche?" Vel inquired.

"Yes. She brought me with her. Now wait here!" Nike flung forth, taking her torch staff into her hands and flying to help the Goddess of Luck.

"Sure... I guess." The man watched the goddess fly towards the battle, knowing that she would be a bigger help then he would right now.

Tyche currently had her staff driven into the nose of the beast, pinning it down against the ground. Nike flew in at full speed and swung her staff. The flaming end made contact with the head of the beast, which forced it to move and tear its nose apart from where it was stuck to the ground. Blood sprayed all over the grass and trees and the monster howled in pain. In quick session, Nike circled back around struck down, embedding the sharp tip of her staff into the ear of the beast.

The monster began to rampage about and eventually it shook Nike off. It moved with sudden speed and jumped up to snatch her out of the air with its teeth. Nike screamed in pain. The monster shook its head around, like a dog that was holding a chew toy, and threw her into the trees nearby, where she crashed through the branches and to the ground.

"Nike!" Tyche yelled, hearing the other woman's pain. She turned around however when a growl came. The creature had turned to her next. She held up her sceptres and pointed the sharp bladed end at the beast.

Vel watched nearby and felt he had to help in some way. While the monster became busy with the Tyche, he ran to the fallen goddess. It looked like Nike had several stab wounds around her waist and shoulder, her golden ichor spilling onto the ground. Vel knelt down next to her and helped her to her back.

"Vel, do something. If you don't help her, she'll..."

"Hey, relax," he says to her in soothing reassurance. "You personify victory. Just as long as you're around, we'll win." Before Nike could say anything more, Vel cut her off and reached for her torch. "I'm going to borrow this."

He left the goddess to lie on the grass and jumped up into the nearest tree. He got closer to where the battle was and jumped from tree to tree to circle around. He knew there was no way for the goddess to _see_ where he was, but he could make some noise to let her know. Tyche had a very acute sense of hearing. When he jumped from branch to branch, it shook the leaves loud enough that the woman turned her head in his direction. Vel circled around behind the monster, hoping that Tyche would get the idea.

Luckily, she did. She started swinging furiously at the beast, driving it back to where Vel was waiting in the trees. Once it got close enough, Vel made a huge jump onto the monster's head, pointing the flaming end of the torch right where one of its yellow eyes was. He struck his target and pushed further, making the beast howl even louder in pain.

Eventually, the heat and infliction of pain was so much that the beast collapsed onto its side, dying. Vel pulled the bloodied torch from the beast's eye socket and jumped to the ground. Tyche walked up to him as they both looked back to gaze at the beast.

"It is dead. Well done, Velinda," Tyche congratulated, and then turned around to start walking away.

"Hold up," Vel spoke, making the goddess stop and look at him. Vel raised the sharp end of the torch and stabbed the head of the beast a few times. After a few assaults, Vel stepped away and turned back to the goddess, who looked at him with a quizzical face.

"Vel?" she inquired.

"Just making sure," he replies and starts walking away from the monster to go and pick up the wounded goddess nearby.

**Peacekeeper**

* * *

So by this time next week I'll be be in school for the 2nd semester, and I have a full schedule! I guess if I wanna finish high school I gotta finish hard. That won't interfere with updates... or so I hope.


	6. Masked Hero: Chapter 3

**Enemies of Earth**

Vel ran some hot water in the sink and soaked a cloth in it. When it was absolutely soaked, he turned the water off and wringed out the excess in the cloth before picking up some wrapping bandages and bringing it over to a couch in the living space in his warehouse.

On the couch lay Nike, with her wings tucked in under her and a blanket over her. Some bandages were already covering her wounds, but they were stained with brown blood and needed to be replaced. Vel set the supplies down and carefully sat down next to Nike before slowly starting to peel off the old bandages, which made the goddess cringe in discomfort.

Across from him, Madison sat on the other couch at one end while Tyche sat on the other. The woman was holding a wine glass in her hand with some red liquid in it. She had finally taken her blindfold off, but she still had to reach out to touch the table in front of her and move her hand around when she went to fill her glass again.

"Are you blind?" Madison asks innocently.

"Yes, I am," the goddess replied. "I have been since I was born."

"Do you... want me to help you?"

"No, no. I'm capable of doing it myself. But thank you for offering." Tyche filled up her glass again successfully, as if she wasn't really blind at all. Madison was amazed by this, but she figured that a few millennia of life had given the goddess this unique ability.

"I remember the day I found that out myself," Vel spoke, still cleaning up Nike's wounds. "I tried to help her walk through the garden one time. She was so irritated that she slapped me and walked away."

Tyche's diluted green eyes pointed to where Vel was and she glared at him. "I did. I told him I was just fine on my own and needed no guidance. Although I appreciated the offer, he wouldn't let me go alone. He was still young back then and still new to Olympus at the time, so I forgave him." The woman then turned her head back to Madison. "I'm sorry. We have not properly met yet. My name is Tyche."

She held out her hand. Madison continued to be amazed by her ability to move and sense things around her just like a person _with_ their eyesight. "Hi, I'm Madison."

"Are you a friend of Vel's?"

"Yeah. When Vel moved first moved here, we ran into each other when he helped me from a robbery," Madison explained.

"I see."

Vel finished fixing the last of the bandages over Nike's shoulder wound, sighing in relief that it was done. He put the excess on the table and looked back at the goddess as he instructed, "Don't move, ok? It's not exactly perfect, but it should heal quickly. Unfortunately, I'm no god of medicine."

Nike, despite still feeling uncomfortable with her bandaged wounds, smirked in amusement. "Nope. You're still just you. I missed you."

Vel brushed the goddess' red hair out of her face, smiling back at her fondly. "I missed you too. Both of you. I haven't seen anyone since I came here. But what are you doing here?"

"Finally! We can get to business." Tyche set her wine glass on the table. "Vel, there's something that you need to know. Brace yourself because what I'm about to say to you may be a bit heavy."

"Does it involve the monster that attacked me?"

"Yes. That monster is not the only one stalking the shadows of the surface of Earth. There are more of them, and their numbers are growing," Tyche informs him gravely.

Vel narrowed his eyes in dismay. "How long has this been happening?"

"Just a few days now. We've killed the first ones, but now they are hiding and are making their way to these lands. My guess is that they are all after you."

Shock overcame him in an instant at Tyche's words. "Why would they all be after me?"

"Because they are only mindless minions with orders to track you down and kill you where you stand," the goddess answered in a serious tone. "Vel... the Zodrac are here."

The man's eyes widened as he sat back up straight. "They are?" he questions in disbelief.

"Who's the 'Zodrac'?" Madison inquired.

"They are the monsters who came from the sky and descended onto our world to kill the gods," Tyche explained to her informatively.

"Aliens?"

"In a sense. They're not of Earth origin, that's for sure," Vel answered. "They're monsters made of black rock and energy. They came to Earth because they wanted to inhabit it, but when they learned that it was the gods who ruled supreme over the Earth, they decided to wage war against the heavens. They came to the surface—the mortal lands—and that's where the feud reached its peak."

"And also where Coliseus was brought into the picture," Tyche added. Turning her head to Madison, who was staring at her in utmost confusion, she explained, "Coliseus was the Greek hero who ended the war between the Zodrac and the gods. Vel takes after him... very much. He was destined to do the same thing if the Zodrac ever came back."

"So now that they're here, he has to go and fight them?" Madison asked in uncertainty.

"Yeah, but there's a problem," Vel replied grimly, holding up his hands in a sign that he didn't have anything in them. "I don't have the tools or the powers to do it. The Zodrac are massive monsters and that thing that attacked me was just a servant of theirs. I'm not only going to be fighting the Zodrac; I'll have a swarm of monsters biting me in the ass as well."

"So why don't you get help?" Madison questioned, fear noticeably growing slightly in her eyes.

"Yeah, why don't I get help?" Vel says in a heavily sarcastic manner, crossing his arms in annoyance. Why don't you explain that to her, Tyche?"

Madison could see it now that it was obvious that he didn't like the fact that he had to do this alone. Without speaking another word to him, she then turned to Tyche, who heaved a heavy sigh as she slumped against the backrest of the couch.

"When Coliseus defeated the Zodrac, he did it without the help of the gods and goddesses."

"But why?" Madison pressed to know. "Gods have powers, don't they?"

"We do. It's just that the Zodrac were such dangerous and powerful enemies that even the gods didn't want to get close to them. And no, it is not because of cowardly fear; the gods are never cowards. But the Zodrac had developed a weapon that was capable to end our immortality. If any of us immortals were to even be struck by that weapon, it could mean the complete and inevitable end of us."

That piece of news shocked Madison, making her gasp at what she was hearing. She absolutely could not believe it. For most of her life, she had always assumed that gods could never be killed; that they were invincible and absolutely nothing could end their existence. But right here, right now, she was learning now that the fact was _not _entirely true.

"That's why Coliseus was asked to help. Driven by the determination to protect his home on the mortals lands, he was rendered fearless in a time when we weren't. He did the impossible when he led an entire army of mortal soldiers against the Zodrac."

Tyche then sat back up straight and faced Vel again. "This is why we came, Vel. We want to warn you that the Zodrac are here to try and kill the gods again."

Vel remained still, thinking about the task that had suddenly found a straight pathway to him. He had never battled a real enemy before. All he ever had under his belt were just his sparring matches and practice lessons with Athena. He felt uncomfortable thinking about the sudden leap between practice sparring to giant monsters that he would soon have to face in actual combat. He didn't even have any special powers of his own to use, so how was he supposed to defeat the great enemy that lay in the shadows, waiting to kill him?

"I don't think I can do it," he mutters under his breath just after the silence had settled in.

Tyche gaped at what she was hearing. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I don't think I'm capable of doing it. Coliseus was a trained soldier, while I've never killed anything in my life until just a few hours ago!"

"But you knew this was coming, Vel. We told you the day you came to Olympus," Tyche pointed out. "You should be prepared. You should have what you need to defeat the Zodrac!"

"No, he doesn't," said the person who had been silent up until this point. Everyone then turned to Nike, who reached a hand out to Vel. "Give me your hand," she urged gently.

Vel willingly put his hand in Nike's, and the goddess closed her eyes. Soon, their joined hands started to glow as he could feel a strange tingling sensation. He, along with Tyche and Madison, watched in silenced awe as the light started to mould and grow into a big long object.

Once the light faded, his eyes grew wide as he looked at what remained in his hands.

A big, old and rusty scabbard was between Vel's and Nike's hand. Piled on top of it was a leather armlet of some sort. He picked up the items and held them up in front of them. The leather on the armlet looked torn and burnt, and the scabbard had many scratches on it, even a few pieces were broken off of the edges.

"What are these?" Vel inquired with astonishment in his voice. He set the gauntlet down and looked at the scabbard first. Brown rust fell to the ground as he ran his fingers over the metal.

"They belonged to Coliseus, once," Nike told him. "He used these weapons in his fight against the monsters that plagued the world."

Vel grabbed the handle of the stashed blade inside and pulled it out of its sheath. It was an old Greek-fashioned xiphos that too had rusted away into being nothing but an ancient artifact. Through the flat of the blade was a long, burnt hole, and a large piece of the sword was missing from the tip.

He gazed at the weapon in complete awe as he looked at what was left of it after the war, before setting the blade down on the table and picking up the gauntlet. He tried to fit it on, but the leather tore even more and he didn't want to risk ruining it, so he just examined it.

"What is this?" he inquires with curiosity.

"It's supposed to be a shield. When you activate it, a shield is formed," Nike answered.

"A shield?" He found a round crest over the middle of the gauntlet, which he supposed was the piece that made the shield. Putting it down on the table, he then inquired, "I'm supposed to defeat the Zodrac with these? Is this it?"

"It's all Coliseus had," Tyche says and picked up the sword herself. She ran her fingers over it to understand what it looked like, and then picked up the gauntlet next.

"You can't be serious! Those things could snap the sword in half and crush the shield with no problem I bet!" Vel argued.

"Not these weapons. When Hephaestus crafted them, he made sure that the only weakness they would have was time. Not even the Zodrac's own special tools could cut through them. I can tell already that these weapons are really worn down after centuries of not being used." Tyche set the gauntlet down and looked up at Vel with a serious face. "This is all you have, Vel. I'm sure if you go and ask Hephaestus to repair them that he'll be happy to do it for you."

He leaned back and turned away to think over the task once again. His face was grim, showing that he clearly didn't like what he was being told to do all of a sudden. He didn't feel confident about the idea, but what other choices does he have? The day he learned that he was a god was also the day he learned that this day would eventually come. He just felt unprepared for it, and a bit uninformed.

"I guess I can't really ignore it, can I? If the Fates predicted it, then I've got no choice."

"You would've done it anyways," Nike remarked. "You love the Earth."

The man smiled. "Yeah, I do. It's a beautiful place, and I'm not gonna let some alien colonists screw it up just so they can have our resources."

"Your speech has changed, Vel," Tyche pointed out. "You don't talk as formal as you used to."

"Has it changed? I can't tell."

"Hmm… Maybe living in an advancing world will do that to a person. The mortals use such strange new slangs and words now."

There was an air of silence that followed. Everyone was sort of lost in their own thoughts and feelings about the current situation, until Vel finally stood up and said, "Well, I gotta take Madison back." He turned back to Nike, and said, "Then I'll take care of you. Tyche, what are you going to do?"

"I'll go back to Olympus and inform everyone that you know about our crisis and that you plan to do something about it. You _do_ plan to do something about this, do you?" the goddess inquired with uncertainty.

"I can't not do something about it," he sighed. "It's just a matter of if I'll live through it or not."

Vel could see the worry in the mortal girl's eyes as soon as he finished that sentence, but he said nothing of it and gestured for Madison to follow him. As they got into the truck and drove off, Nike remained where she was while Tyche disappeared in a flash.

Out on the road, it was silent as Vel drove Madison home. The overhead street lights created illusions with their shadows as they got into the city and the outside lights lit up the cab of the truck faintly.

Vel looked over at Madison and found her staring blankly at the dashboard. He couldn't read her face very well, but he could make a safe guess as to what she was thinking. They had been good friends for two years, and approaching her as a god was a high honor for any mortal human. If he died, Madison would become depressed. Vel didn't want to die, but more importantly, he didn't want to become separated from this girl. He didn't want to break her fragile heart.

"What are you thinking about?" he asks quietly. Madison finally looked up at him for the first time since they entered the truck, but she quickly turned away again and shrugged.

"I don't know."

Now Vel was concerned. That was her usual answer when she was troubled by something. "Come on, Madi. Tell me what you're thinking. Are you worried about me?" he asked. The girl didn't respond right away, but she looked at him. He could see it in her eyes; Madison was scared.

"What if you don't come back?" she murmured. "I'll never know if you made it or not. I'll never know if you survived."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you! You saw this coming, didn't you?" Madison questioned in a sudden outburst. Vel was ashamed to admit it, but he did. "You knew that these… 'aliens' or whatever would be coming, and that you would have to kill them, yet you hardly know how to fight! Why?"

"Because I didn't know _when_ this was going to happen. I was always distracted, Madison. I've been traveling the world for the last fifty years and I've just settled down here. I'm not going to learn how to fight monsters now," Vel replied calmly.

"But why didn't you learn that while you were still in Olympus training?"

"Because they didn't allow it. I only learned the basics of swordplay and a bit of history. Athena told me that I wasn't strong enough at the time to fight monsters."

"And now?" Madison inquired. "You hardly killed the monster that attacked us tonight. Look at Nike! She's lived for thousands of years and she still got hurt! What's going to happen to you?"

Vel haplessly shrugged. "I don't know."

"Exactly! I don't know either," Madison turned back to the window, sighing after finally getting out her frustration. "I guess I'm a little worried about you."

Vel looked at the girl before he quickly turned to the road. In a calm, low voice he replied, "Listen, I made a mistake. I should've learned to fight monsters. I don't even know how I managed to ignore it for so long. Every time I thought about it I would get distracted by something else. But now I _have_ _to_ learn how to fight them. I got no distractions this time."

Madison wiped away a tear from her eye and turned her head back to him. "Did the Fates ever say if you would live or not?"

"No, they never said anything about whether I would live or not. But they did say that this was an important duty that I had to take care of, so I'm going to take care of it," he tells her with a firm tone. They finally reached Madison's house. Vel grabbed the mortal girl's hand and held it in his. "I'm going to be fine."

"But I don't know that," she said. "Vel, you're the coolest thing that's ever happened to me, ever. I don't want you to take that away from me."

"I won't. I'll stay here and learn how to fight first, if it makes you feel a little better. But you have to understand that I might be gone for a long time once I leave," Vel warned her. He tried to make her smile by smiling himself, but it barely did anything.

Instead of smiling though, Madison leaned over the divider and hugged him. He did not hesitate to hug her back and gave her a light kiss on the cheek.

"I'll make it up to you later. You deserve a better ending to a night than this," he whispered into her ear. She finally broke away from him and stepped out of the truck. She waved bye just as Vel started driving away, and then wiped another tear away from her eyes before walking into her house.

... ... ...

The next day, Madison received a text from Vel saying that he had left for Lemnos Island with a goddess named Iris. Based on her limited knowledge, she knew that Iris was the Goddess of the Rainbow and another messenger for the Olympians. Madison was a bit irritated; not because Vel left, but because he was in the company of probably another drop-dead gorgeous woman that he was going to bang later.

Madison knew about Vel's long string of one night stands and lovers. It was typical of a god to have many lovers, to the point where it was almost expected of them. But it hurt to know that while she harbored a crush on the man, and it bothered her even more that she looked nowhere close to a goddess. Seeing Nike and Tyche both last night was an eye-opening experience for her, for Madison got to see for the first time what Vel described as 'some of the most beautiful women in the world.' He was not kidding.

The two women who saved Vel were beautiful beyond measure. Madison couldn't even comprehend how pretty they looked. Even Nike, with a pair of white wings on her back looked so adorable with her curly red hair and her white tunic dress. Tyche, in her purple dress, looked like a slim woman ready to go to a fancy ballroom dance. Madison was told that they weren't even the pretty ones on Olympus. She couldn't imagine what one someone like Aphrodite or Hera looked like.

So with this fact stuck in her mind, Madison was grumpy all morning. She didn't talk to anyone a lot and remained quiet, even drifting off during her classes and not paying attention. Her friends wondered why she was so upset, but she didn't want to answer them. She just wanted to be left alone. But truly, she wanted to see Vel again.

Lunch came around and Madison sat in the far corner of the library by herself, reading a book to try and get her mind to other places. But it wasn't working. She tried to do homework instead, but it still stuck in her mind; the fact that Vel could be in the presence of a beautiful goddess right now, running his fingers all over her body in lust.

A girl walked into the library and found the maroon-haired girl sitting by herself in the corner. She walked over to her and sat across the table from her. Madison looked up, but couldn't recognize the other girl. She just sat there, smiling at her.

"Who are you? I haven't seen you around here at all. Are you new?" she asked the stranger.

"You've met me before. We met last night," the girl said with an incredibly soft voice. Madison's eyes narrowed as he looked over the girl. She was just a random, brunette girl with a white tank top and boot-cut jeans. There wasn't much to her.

Except for her bright blue eyes.

"Nike?" Madison realized with widening eyes. The girl grinned.

"Hi. How are you doing?" the goddess-in-disguise inquired. Madison's jaw dropped out of place in shock.

"Oh my god. What are you doing here?"

"Just exploring the city. I woke up this morning still in Vel's warehouse, you know? He was nowhere to be found and I have no current duties, so I'm here!" Nike replied cheerfully. "So what are you reading?"

Madison glanced down at the book in her hands for a moment before looking back up. "What? Oh, it's just a random book I picked up. I was bored." She tossed the book to the side and examined the goddess once again. "I thought you had wings."

"I do. I just don't have them on right now," the other girl replied. Madison became confused.

"What? You don't have them on? Are they detachable or something?"

"Oh, no. Don't be silly! This is just a temporary disguise," Nike waved away with her hand. She saw that the mortal girl was even more confused, so she added, "Gods and goddesses have the ability to change their appearance at will. We do it whenever we're on the surface to conceal our identities."

"Oh! I see."

"It's an interesting place you live in, Madison. This city is so full of life and busy-bodies! I've never been to this side of the world before." Nike looked around the library to see all the other kids in the rooms, eyes wide with fascination. Vel was right when he said that the gods didn't like to leave the comfort of their home country.

"It's not too bad. It's pretty peaceful on this side of the world." Madison looked up after she had pulled her phone out. "So what are you doing here? How did you find me?"

Nike's face turned guilty. She bit her lip and pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket. "Actually... I found a note from Vel when I woke up this morning."

She handed the note to Madison and the girl took it to read what it said. Madison could tell that it was Vel's handwriting. He believed in the preservation of such a style.

It was addressed to Nike about her, to watch over her while he was away until he got back. He didn't want anything to happen to her while he wasn't within her reach. Madison looked over the note twice, making sure that what she was reading was right. Nike smiled with amusement as the mortal girl's cheeks became red and a smile started to grow on her lips.

"Do you like what it said?" she inquired with a knowing smile. Madison glanced up at her quickly before lowering her hide to hide her betraying blush.

"It-it's definitely flattering," she says. She put the note down and let her bang cover her cheeks. It was embarrassing to her how easily Nike could tell that she was happy about the note.

"Oh! I think that's a sign!" Nike chirped in a sing-sung voice. She had a really sweet voice when she sung.

"What do you mean? What sign?"

"It means that Vel's taken an interest in you," Nike said, which caught Madison's attention.

"It does?" she asked eagerly. Nike giggled and nodded at her reaction.

"Yup! But you're the first mortal he's even been curious about, though. How long have you known him?"

"Only for two years. Why? Do you think he really likes me?" Madison queries with her eyes locked on the goddess in interest. Nike continued to giggle at the girl's excitement.

"Two years, huh? That's ideal, I guess. Vel's a sucker for pretty girls," she remarks with a smile. "He used to be a bit of a skirt chaser in his younger years, but I think it was around two years ago that he became more confound."

As Nike pointed that out, Madison felt her spirits rise. It was just more proof that she needed to know that Vel took an interest in him.

Maybe he wasn't philandering with another woman right now.

"You're in for a treat if Vel really likes you. No matter whom it is, Vel treats all his lovers with love and respect." Nike added. But she then looked away from Madison and then murmured something else. "I know he did with me..."

Madison's jaw dropped as her eyes widening slightly to what she was just heard. "What? You mean... you were Vel's girlfriend?"

"Once. We were together after he decided to leave Olympus. I went after him because I had a crush on him like you do," Nike explained. Her cheerful demeanor had suddenly been replaced by a saddened one. Obviously, she was upset by this.

"So... what happened? How come you two aren't together anymore?" Madison asks her calmly, internally curious.

"It was war," she answered. Madison's expression became shocked. "I know, of all things, right? You would think that he'd want to stay out of it, but he didn't. He stayed to help those poor people. Vel's chivalrously inclined. He believes in equality of the group."

"What was the war about?" Madison was almost afraid to ask, but she felt she had to know. Her curiosity was growing. Nike closed her eyes and breathed in and out a few times. When she opened them again, her lips worded and formed three words.

"World War Two."

**Peacekeeper**

* * *

Oh, February is here! My second and last semester of school has finally gotten underway and I'm so excited to be done with it! But it's a full schedule, so it's guaranteed that I'll be busy. That, plus my part-time job, writing and drawing. There's so much to do!

A friendly reminded that there are image links on my profile of all the characters that have made an appearance so far. If you have time, look them up!

Until next Wednesday!


	7. Masked Hero: Chapter 4

**Enemies of Earth**

Vel looked up at the large dormant volcano from where he sat, perched up on a rock in the middle of a stream that poured down from the side of the mountain, from which he had bathed himself in a while ago. He had arrived on Lemnos Island with Iris just that morning, and the Olympian god who stationed his large iron-works shop underneath the volcano had taken in his weapons to repair and strengthen them.

Hephaestus, the God of the Forge and Fire, was a master builder. He could create anything out of any material and make anything that was required of him. Nearly all of the weapons that the gods wielded were made by Hephaestus with his very own hands. He was the go-to person if someone needed something built. He could do the impossible.

He was also the lowly husband of the very gorgeous goddess Aphrodite—whom Vel had barely spoken to during his stay on Olympus—although it was almost like the wedding had never happened. Poor Hephaestus was born with a disfigured left foot and was undesirable by the Goddess of Love, which resulted in her desire for other men, more particularly the God of War, Ares. But Hephaestus could care less. He was more comfortable working in his forge than sitting up on his throne on Mount Olympus, which was collecting dust.

Since Hephaestus was so busy, he couldn't tend to Vel's weapons right away. This left the raven-haired boy to wander around the island and familiarize himself with the layout again. The small towns and villages located all around the island were fair and nice to him, and Vel was enjoying his stay so far. Never being on Lemnos much before, there was plenty for Vel to discover and explore.

Vel rinsed his hair in the river and collected the rest of his clothes before walking back to the forge. The entrance was kept hidden underneath a bunch of old fallen trunks near the base of the volcano. Vel had to hop his way over the fallen overgrowth and push the huge doors open, which revealed a large tunnel going downwards. Looking back at the entrance, Vel wandered how Hephaestus could make it through all of that with his bad foot.

The tunnel led to a very large, cleaned out cave under the mountain. The rock had been curved out to make room for a bunch of equipment, spare parts and other various things that Hephaestus used to make his creations. The whole place was lit up with everlasting torches on the walls and chandlers on the ceiling hanging down from every large portion of the roof. Cooling wasn't a problem as one would expect; there were coolers and air vents all over the place, embedded in the walls to make up for space. But despite all the free space, Hephaestus still had his gadgets and tools scattered all over the workspace.

"I'm back!" Vel shouts as he walked in. He could spot Hephaestus sitting at a desk fiddling with an object. Vel stopped and waited for him to reply, but he didn't. "I'm back," he repeated.

Hephaestus waved him away with his hand, not really looking at him. "Yes, yes, I heard you the first time."

That was a bad characteristic of his. Whenever Hephaestus was focused on something, it was the _only_ thing he was focused on. The world around him could be burning and he'd still be fiddling with an object. Vel just rolled his eyes and continued into the other room where a TV and chair were set up. There weren't many channels on the television set; they were all home building, recreation and construction channels, as well as the news channel. Vel flipped through some of the channels as he heard metal clanking against the rock floor and felt a presence approach him. He started to smell something good, like eggs and bacon; the usual meal that Hephaestus had on a daily basis.

"Welcome back, Velinda," a robotic voice greeted. Vel looked up and saw a shiny aqua man in complete body armor standing next to him, holding a plate of food in each hand.

"Diro! I haven't seen you since I got here. Where did you go?" Vel inquired.

Diro was living proof that Hephaestus had performed what the mortals had been trying to do for decades; he had made a fully functional life-sized robot. Actually, he made two of them; each of which assisted Hephaestus in making various things for him.

"To get my wiring and systems redone. This would make it the eighty-seventh thousand, nine hundred and sixty-fourth update I've ever had," the robot replied, to which Vel couldn't repeat what the robot just said to him. These mechanical miracles had been invented by Hephaestus way before the act of year-counting started, and they were fully capable of performing any human actions.

"Should I start calling you Diro Mark whatever-number-you-just-told-me, now?"

Diro _shrugged_. "If it pleases you. Unfortunately the update didn't come with a human emotions program. So I have yet to feel this emotion called frustration that my master experiences so much." Diro looked over its shoulder to give his creator a glance in the other room.

"I don't think Hephaestus needs any emotion. It just gets in his way," Vel remarked. He could faintly hear the God of Fire mumble how he heard him.

"My apologies. My update was finished just this morning, so lunch is provided twelve minutes late. Monoro told me you like your eggs scrambled, correct?"

Monoro was the other robot; a golden one. It was the first robot Hephaestus ever made, thus the reason behind their names. Vel heard there was supposed to be a Triro soon.

Vel grabbed the plate from Diro's hand and set it on his lap. "Scrambled is just fine. Thank you."

"You're welcome. I'm glad I could be of service," Diro replies and walks over to Hephaestus to give him his food. As Vel started cutting through his meal, he flipped to the news channel to see what the weather would bring. He was cut short of his eating when he froze to look at what the screen was showing him.

News footage showed an aerial view of a town that Vel recognized. The street that the camera was focused on was completely in shambles. Rubble littered the street and holes were blown into the side of buildings.

The camera then zoomed down the street to find the thing that had caused this mess.

It was a monster. A huge lion tearing through the streets of the town. Vel's eyes widened when the monster turned and he realized it wasn't just a lion. It was actually a chimera. There was a second head with horns of a mountain goat adorned on its head sharing the same body. Vel caught a glimpse of the tail as well and saw that the tail was really a snake.

He could not believe his eyes. A mythical monster was terrorizing the city.

"Hephaestus, you know about the monsters popping up, right?" Vel called out as he ran out of the room. He stopped to look at the god who was still tampering with his device. "Hephaestus!"

"Can't you see I'm busy? Be a bother to me later!" Hephaestus shouts at him in annoyance.

"There's a monster terrorizing your island," Vel stated. He knew he had finally gained Hephaestus' attention when he froze. The God of Fire was known far and wide—at least among the immortals—for being the protector of his island home. Hephaestus set the object in his hands down and rubbed his forehead along with a frustrated sigh.

"I can't go out there. It's been centuries since I've needed to leave my forge for that kind of thing, and most likely I'll need to adjust the pneumatics on my artificial leg," the god says disappointingly.

"Then let me go out there. It's my job to kill anything that threatens Earth anyway. Just give me a sword and I'll—"

"Do you have any training in killing monsters?" Hephaestus intervened. "Do you even know how to treat such an enemy?"

"No," Vel replied truthfully, before adding in determination, "but I'm not going to sit on my ass and do nothing."

The other god set his hands down on the desk to think. Hephaestus didn't have any means of getting out quickly, and even if his prosthetic leg was ready, Vel could move much faster than he could. It wouldn't be such a bad idea to send the boy ahead while he got ready himself.

"There are few spare weapons in the armory. Take what you need and go. I'll get out there myself as soon as I'm ready," Hephaestus commanded. Vel nodded and ran into another room where a bunch of miscellaneous weapons were stacked. Most of them were unfinished projects that would lead to something he wouldn't be able to understand, so he grabbed anything that he recognized.

"Velinda, you have not yet the ability to change your appearance, do you?" Diro asked.

"Uh… no, but I've been trying," Vel answered with idleness as he adjusted the strap of a scabbard. He grabbed a shield next and made sure the handle was strong enough, as most of the weapons looked old and ready to break.

"I would advise you to find a way to conceal your identity until you do. A helmet or mask would be appropriate."

Vel looked around the room among the piles of stuff. He grabbed the nearest mask he could reach and held it up. It was a brown, rusty, sort of masquerade styled mask with slits for the eyes instead of holes. "What about this?"

"It covers exactly sixty-two percent of your face, twenty-two percent more than what most mortal-made face recognition systems need to identify you. It should suffice," Diro replied.

"Perfect. I'll go with it." Vel stuffed the mask into the pocket of his trench coat and took off into the forest. He jumped through the trees, which had branches that were spaced out and made it easy for him to travel faster through the forest. Once he came to the end of the forestry, he ran the rest of the way towards the town in trouble. His deathless lungs and legs helped him keep his pace.

Vel stopped at the top of a hill and looked down at the town. Chimneys of smoke rose into the air and a few bright flurries of flames could be seen. He could hear a faint explosion as well and knew that the monster was still active in the city. He pulled out the mask and brushed off rust with his sleeve before putting it on over his eyes and running down into the city below.

The streets were in ruins and the residents were still running to get out of the town when he reached civilization. He tried to keep out of sight of the mortals by running to anything that was big enough to conceal him. With a few years of stalking prey under his belt, he accomplished this easily. Vel nearly made it to an intersection before the building in front of him exploded.

The chthonic chimera blasted through the building and landed in the street. Its black fur was covered with dust and soot from running through buildings, and it smelled horrible. Vel backed away and reached for his sword, but he was suddenly attacked and knocked aside. The snake tail had spotted him. The chimera turned around and locked eyes with him.

Vel could immediately see its yellow glaring orbs look straight at him, and knew immediately that it was another servant of the Zodrac.

With a mighty roar, the chimera jumped at him. Vel managed to jump out of the way, but just barely. He couldn't move in time to avoid a nasty claw attack, however. The giant paw swatted him across the street into the wall of another building.

The pain was immense; a sort of pain that Vel had never experienced before. He groaned as he got back up, but the monster was on him quickly. He held up his shield as the beast bit down and clamped its teeth around the shield. He pulled back, but the monster easily lifted him off of the ground.

Vel reached for his sword and aimed for the gums. With a desperate yell, he sunk the blade deep into the gum lines of the chimera's teeth and stabbed them several times. The monster roared in agonizing pain and let him go, making him fall to the ground but able to land on his feet. The monster licked up its own red blood from its chaps and roared even more in rage.

Vel aimed his sword at the beast, getting into the stance he was trained to use (But he remembered for a brief second that the stance was for attacks by other human-like beings, not menacing monsters).

As the beast charged him again, Vel saw its tail fling around behind it and caught sight of the sharp fangs that had green ooze dripping from them.

_Chimera snake tails are poisonous, but would they be against their host?_ Vel wondered that. He had never heard of it before, so now was a good time to figure it out.

The monster leaped onto him, but Vel managed to jump back, swinging the sword but unfortunately missing his target. The chimera punched him with its paw, knocking him back over the pavement. He got up and shook his head, trying to orient himself, just as he saw the beast run after him again.

Vel decided that now was the time to play a bit of cat and mouse, and start running away through the streets, luring the beast to wherever. Truthfully, he didn't know what to do. He didn't have a plan. But he knew that he had to keep moving.

As he ran into an empty street, he spotted a big truck parked not too far away. He climbed up onto it and hid, waiting for the monster to catch up. He could hear it run onto the street and creep around, getting closer with each passing second. Vel peeked around the truck and saw it getting closer. He climbed around as the beast walked by and hopped onto the top. He then drew his sword and leaped onto the monster's back, startling it and making it roar in rage.

Vel grabbed its black fur in order to stay on. The snake tail rose above him and struck out, but he swung his sword. The blade cut off one of its long fangs, which then fell to the ground, still leaking green poisonous acid. The snake backed off of him, but the chimera still bucked and kicked. It threw Vel off and he landed against a car nearby. He groaned as he tried to get back up. He turned around and spotted the chimera turning around to face him.

In between them was the fang.

… … …

Hephaestus glared at the TV set as the helicopter camera focused on the mysterious dark figure attacking the monster with old tools from his forge. He was becoming outraged watching Vel pointlessly attacked the beast and fail to severely wound it in any way. He slammed his fist into the armchair in utmost frustration.

"Accursed kid couldn't learn a few things first before tackling something out of his league!" he shouted. He knew that Vel didn't have any training in fighting monsters. He didn't know why, and it absolutely didn't make any sense that the hero of the Earth didn't know how to fight monsters. Vel couldn't inflict any wounds at all. Hephaestus would have cooked the monster for dinner in five minutes.

"Chances of Velinda surviving this encounter are significantly low," Diro mentioned. "If this continues, we might as well prepare a funeral rite."

Hephaestus rubbed his temple and tried to vent some of his frustration with a sigh. "What exactly did Athena teach Velinda? Did she teach him nothing?! What good is the boy if he can't fight monsters?"

"Shall I prepare your artificial leg, master?" Diro asked.

"No."

"No?"

Hephaestus got up and grabbed the crutch next to him. "By the time I get out there the boy will already be dead. No, no! We're going to get Vel some help, alright, but it won't be me!"

Diro narrowed down the possibilities with its mathematically and probability inclined robotic brain. He also included the fact that Hephaestus might do something out of stubbornness. As the God of Fire walked towards a large room holding a pod, Diro finally narrowed it down to one thing. "Master Hephaestus, do you mean what I think you mean?"

"Yes, Diro." Hephaestus lit a torch up with his powers and watched as the flames carried around to the rest of the torches in the room. The light revealed an open pod with a large figure inside. "We're going to prepare Triro!"

… … …

Vel looked down at the fang, but the beast looked straight at him, not taking notice. Vel withdrew his weapons so that his hands were free. He needed to get that fang. The chimera roared and crouched down, ready to pounce on him.

It was a stand-off.

But Vel didn't keep it that way for long. He started running forward and so did the abomination promising him death. As they got closer to each other, he could feel the rumbling of the ground.

At the last second, he dived forward just as the beast swooped down with its teeth. It barely missed him and Vel was able to grab the poisonous fang. Now with the weapon, he and the chimera turned around to face each other again.

The monster leapt forward and attacked, swiping its claw again. Vel managed to protect himself with his shield, but was thrown across the road in the process. The goat head bleated as the lion head roared, and the creature attempted to bite him again. Vel jumped back and avoided the attack, but he couldn't strike back with the fang in his hand. The monster knocked him back some more; like a cat playing with a toy, weakening him before it decided to devour him.

Just when Vel though he was finally going to get a chunk of his flesh bitten off of him, something came up from behind the monster, a large silver robot of some sort. It was big enough to yank the chimera back by the neck and throw it away from him. Vel looked up, exhausted and beaten from the abuse. A ten-foot tall robot towered over him, gleaming silver plating and two blue eyes.

"Master Velinda. I am at your service," the robot spoke, saluting him.

"What? Who are you?" Vel gasped.

"I am Robotic Operations Mark Three. You may also call me Triro," the machine told him in a monotone voice.

"Oh," Vel got up and brushed himself off. "You're Triro, huh? About time you showed up."

"Master Hephaestus told me to take orders from you in this mission. How may I serve you?"

"Do you think we can kill it with this?" Vel held up the snake fang for Triro's mechanical eyes to look at. It scanned over the item he was holding, emitting a laser at the object.

"Chimera snake tails are highly poisonous to humans and other monsters alike. However to strike with a fang of its own is unheard of," Triro determined.

"Then today's the day we find out. Pin it down for me so I can get onto it!" Vel ordered.

The robot nodded at him and ran towards the beast, with every step it took shaking the ground. The robot was heavy, but it looked powerful with its stocky body. Vel knew Hephaestus well enough that there must have been a bunch of weapons and gadgets under that armor waiting to pop out and be used.

Triro slung its arm around the lion head of the monster immediately, but the chimera raged about, bring the robot for a ride as it tried to get into position to bring it down. The machine tried to wrestle it to the ground as Vel got around them and waited for his opportunity. Triro tried punching the monster in the head with its fist several times but to no avail. The chimera snake tail lashed out from behind, striking a vulnerable spot in the robot's armor. Triro let go and tried to reach back and get the snake off of it. The snake pulled back and ripped out a chunk of armor with a bit of wiring.

This disabled Triro's left arm. It went limp and hung loosely from its socket. The chimera turned around and swung its paw right into Triro's head, knocking out an eye. Vel watched with amazement as the chimera knocked down the robot that was supposed to help him. But he quickly snapped out of his stupor when the snake spat at him. He relinquished his sword from his sheath and held it in front of him, ready to strike. Vel thought of his enemy as a person waiting to lunge forward at any time.

The snake struck out and Vel swung around his sword. He predicted that the snake would be particularly fast so he swung sooner. His blade deflected the snake's venomous fang past him. Vel took hold of the neck and sliced his blade cleanly through it.

The head went flying onto the ground and the chimera howled. It turned around to face him, but Triro quickly came up and knocked it down with a smash to the head. The robot held it down long enough for Vel to climb onto it. He nearly lost his grip when the chimera freed itself and tore off the other functioning arm with its lion teeth, but Vel managed to raise the fang and struck down right where the spine split between the goat and lion heads.

The monster roared louder than it ever had and began to weaken instantly. The chimera limped across the street and collapsed, ending the rampage.

Vel released his breath and climbed down, only to find that Triro was in bad shape. The humanoid lost its left arm and its other was nonfunctional. Its face was crippled and its one other eye had gone out, leaving it blind.

"Are you, uh… going to make it back?" Vel inquires in concern. Sadly, the robot shook its head.

"I will not make it back in time before the humans discover my parts and take them. I've been given orders from my master that I must eliminate all evidence should I fail to help," Triro reported. Vel looked upon the broken figure of the robot and shook his head in fear of what he realized the robot was going to do.

"Oh, come on. We can get out of here. How heavy are you? I'll carry you back," he offered, but the robot shook its head. Its chest piece started to split open and revealed a round device. Vel's eyes widened when the device blinked and worried it would explode, but it didn't. Instead, the device released a blue ominous gas that enveloped the robot as it walked over to its torn arm. Slowly, the metal began to deteriorate and break down. The robot fell into a pile of rusting, foul-smelling metal and sparking wires.

Vel stared at the pile and lowered his head, understanding the reason why Triro would decide to do that. The gods had a rule when the new age had come; never leave a trace of their existence for the mortals to discover. Should such a piece of evidence be left behind, it should be terminated completely. It was the rule that prevented the doctors from sampling his blood when he was a kid; the samples were always stolen by gods in disguise.

Vel turned around and ran out of the city, carrying his own weapons with him. He left the city in a mess of destruction and unrest.

"Anarchy," he mutters to himself in dismay while looking back at the town. "Absolute anarchy."

He walked back all the way to the volcano and found the entrance to the forge. When he walked in, he pulled the mask off and tried to rub away the rust on his face that had rubbed onto his skin from contact.

"Not bad for a first-timer," Hephaestus said and rubbed his beard. "I never thought to use a chimera's snake fang like that before. Quite brilliant, actually."

"Yeah, I guess." Vel slumped down into a chair and rubbed his forehead. Hephaestus looked at him with stern confusion.

"Why are you so upset? You should be happy that you made it out of there alive!"

"Yeah, but I feel bad! I wouldn't be able to do it without the help of Triro!" Vel lashed back. "The fricking hero of Greece could take out three monsters single-handedly! I had to get that beast to stay still just so I could harm it! We lost a good robot in the fight, too."

"Triro was a lost cause. He was not fully prepared to fight. I knew that he wouldn't last long against that sort of thing!" the god confessed. "Besides, they're just robots. They are disposable!"

"Disposable?! What if that was a human being? Triro was worth like a hundred of them!" Vel threw himself back against the chair. "I'll never reach the level of greatness that Coliseus did. Why don't you hurry up and fix my weapons so I can leave?"

"I already did," Hephaestus replied. At this, Vel looked around the back of the chair to see two weapons held in the god's hands. "Velinda, your weapons are fully repaired and ready for you," the God of Fire declared. "Come and take them! They are yours now."

Vel got up and walked up to Hephaestus, looking down at the scabbard holding the sword and gauntlet that contained the shield. The gauntlet looked brand new with its polished metal and soft leather. The handle fixed into the palm of the glove was sharpened up, and Vel could read the engraved letters that spelled out a word in ancient Greek; _Guardian_.

He put it on and examined the scabbard next. It was cleaned up and had a bright black metallic shine to it. Unsheathing the blade, Vel found the edges were so sharp that there was a slight hum to it when he took a few swings. There were designs on the flat side as well and more letters that spelt another name; _Angel_.

"When did you do this?" Vel wondered, still stunned by how amazing the weapons looked.

"I fixed them while you were gone," Hephaestus replies as he turns around to walk back to the chair at his desk.

"Just now?"

"Yes. Vel, I've repaired and fixed weapons so many times that I could do it with my eyes closed. Your weapons are no exception. After I sent Triro out I went to work on them. Unlike those rusty old weapons you borrowed from my armory, a god's weapons are specially made to not break."

Vel looked down at his weapons again. He realized there was a trigger on the handle and clicked it. The round piece on top of the gauntlet began to transform, becoming a perfectly round, shiny bronze shield. Vel turned his shield over and saw there an image painted onto it. He was amazed when he found the tribal design of a large bird, taken up the entire width of the shield with its wings.

"Coliseus never liked that the shield had just a defensive use. He liked to use if for offensive as well," Hephaestus told him. "It is connected to a powered spring launcher."

"Meaning I can throw the shield?" Vel asked. Hephaestus nodded.

"It might be thin material, but it's sturdier than diamond. It'll bounce back right at you. Your scabbard as well has blades on it as well to take on bigger targets."

Vel looked down at his weapons and looked over them once again. They looked like the weapons of a hero; fully ready and lethal, but cool at the same time. Vel felt something when he held onto them; pride. Holding these tools was a privilege, and to use them was an honor.

"Also…" Hephaestus stepped forward with two more objects in his hands. "I feel you didn't have the right tools to take on that beast, so I made you these. I hear from Artemis your skill with a bow and arrow is quite good."

Vel looked down at the silver bow and quiver of arrows. They were both shiny and looked completely brand new.

"The bow is made of platinum I asked Lord Hades for. It's melted with a technique of mine that makes it lighter so you can carry it around. And the quiver is blessed just like Artemis and Apollo's where you will never run out. With these weapons, I'm sure you'll do much better in killing those monsters."

Vel put his weapons away and picked up the bow and quiver. They were light, and the string on the bow was tight and stiff. Vel suddenly realized how much of a pout he was being and lowered his head in shame.

"Um… thanks, I guess. I don't know what I was thinking there. I was just sort of—"

Hephaestus held up his hand to stop him, and then placed it on Vel's shoulder. "Don't worry about apologizing. I'm just doing my job. You must realize that Coliseus started off as the same way as you; he was never always good at killing monsters. With a bit of proper training, I'm sure you can save us. Now go, before I get annoyed again."

Vel smiled and turned around to walk away. As he left, he picked up the mask he had used to cover his face.

He had an idea.

**Peacekeeper**

* * *

So I'm uploading this chapter right in the middle of my English class. I'm supposed to be writing a short story for an assignment but I want to get this story updated now and get it out of the way. I'm practically writing the last few chapters of this story, so I'm gonna take my time and make sure they're good before I send them to **Muse of Fanfiction**, my beta.


	8. Masked Hero: Chapter 5

**Enemies of Earth**

Vel returned home the next day and immediately sent Madison a text. In the meantime, the man immediately got to work, revising his lessons and sharpening his techniques with a sword and shield, getting used to the feeling of his new weapons. The shield Guardian and the sword Angel were fascinating weapons. Vel could feel that there was an immense power hiding deep within them waiting to be unleashed.

When Madison arrived on her moped at his warehouse, she had a few bags of random things, cloths mostly. The text that Vel sent Madison was a request to buy some materials for him at the store. Since Madison was a fairly wealthy person, she didn't mind. She set them down on the couch and watched with amazement as Vel was still practicing swinging around his sword and shield. He created powerful swings that made the blade hum as it cut through the air and hard thrusts with his shield. The young girl couldn't take her eyes off of him. It was like watching a warrior dance around gracefully. His movements and turns were all seamless and never-ending.

As Vel turned, he finally spotted Madison and stopped completely. She smiled and waved at him innocently, as he smiled back.

"So, what do you think?" he asked.

"I think that was pretty cool," Madison replied. "Are those your weapons?"

"Yup. Fully repaired and ready for battle." Vel stuck the blade into the ground and detached his shield from the launcher for Madison to see. She observed them without getting to close because they looked like very lethal weapons, judging by the way Vel swung them around.

"Is this it? Is this all you have?"

"No. Hephaestus made me a bow as well." Vel picked up his sword and shield and put them away. He walked into his room for a brief moment and returned with said bow in hand, giving it to Madison to hold.

But once she had it in her hands, the girl could feel her fingers start to feel weird. The feeling became stronger, to the point where it bugged Madison so much that she couldn't hold onto it anymore and she dropped it. She yelped and shook her hands like they were on fire.

"What's wrong?" Vel questions in surprise to her unexpected reaction.

"Your bow is haunted or something!" she complained.

"What?"

"Your bow! It's... when I grabbed it, it like went weird and rejected me!" Madison whined.

Vel picked up his bow and looked at it, attempting to see if something was wrong with it. There was nothing, and he shrugged. "It seems fine to me."

"Whatever. I don't wanna touch it again," Madison huffed with a pout.

Vel chuckled and slung the bow over his shoulder. He then went to pick up the bags of cloths that she had brought.

"Is that everything you need? What do you need all that for, anyway?" she asked him. Vel looked through the bags, finding Madison had done what he asked and brought everything he needed.

"I'm going to make something. You know how the gods haven't made contact with the mortals for a few thousand years, now?" He picked up the bags and carried them to his room, with Madison following right behind him.

"Yeah. What? Do you still have to remain hidden or something?"

"Sort of. The Olympians prefer that I keep my identity a secret, but since I never had an actual 'mortal disguise', I have to disguise my real self in something different. Wait here."

Vel disappeared behind the curtain into his room. Madison crossed her arms and placed herself on top of a workbench.

"So why not just learn to change your appearance?" she asked out loud.

"I've been trying to, but I can't for some reason. I've been practicing in front of the mirror but I never seem to get it. I either turn out naked or I look like someone else."

Madison brain fell off track as she tried to imagine what her immortal friend would look like completely nude. Clean skin, masculine body, the whole nine years of what she thought would be the perfect body. She could feel her cheeks getting warmer the longer she thought about it. But then another thought intruded her brain, bringing her away from dreamland.

"Speaking of appearances, guess who came to visit me at school yesterday?" Madison said.

"Who?"

"Nike." Madison could hear the scuffling inside of the bunker come to a stop.

"Oh, so she found my note, did she?" he questioned. Madison smiled as she remembered the words in the note that made her heart flutter.

"Yeah. In disguise, too. She found me at lunch in the library. She said that you wanted her to watch over me until you got back."

"Yeah. I was thinking about that monster that found us the other day. I was worried one would get into the city and somehow find you again, so I asked Nike to keep you safe and call for me if you were ever in danger," Vel said like it was no big deal. But in truth, it _was_ a really big deal to Madison.

"But why? I'm just a normal girl," Madison replied, predicting Vel's next words. He reacted exactly the way she expected him to.

"But you're not. You're something different, Madison. I've told you who I am. I've told you what I've done, yet you still want to be my friend. I mean, I have other mortal friends as well, but they don't talk to me a lot. You do. I feel like you show some general interest in me. You like me, don't you?"

Madison was stunned by Vel's question, but the man continued on, still fumbling about with his clothes.

Vel chuckled. "You probably do, right? I mean, how can't you be interested in a god? We're heavenly beings! Mortals tremble just at the sight of us. But you don't do that. You keep yourself together. I value that. I felt I had to hang on to that, so I asked Nike to protect you."

The girl's heart nearly started racing. She wanted so badly to run in there, tell him just how much he meant to her. It took everything in her will not to do that however and respect Vel's space as he changed.

"Madison?" Vel called out.

"Yeah?" the girl replied with a shaky voice of happiness.

"What do you think about this whole thing? About me having to save the world?"

"Well," the girl tried to shake her previous thoughts out of her head and answered, "it's like the other day. I'm just worried that you'll get hurt."

"Madison, I'm going to get hurt." Vel broke it to her. "In fact, I'm going to get fucked up. There is no way on the face of this planet that I'll come out of this fight and not have a single scratch on me. I'm pretty sure Coliseus didn't when he drove the Zodrac away from our planet."

"You said Coliseus was a trained soldier though, with years of experience. You're just a god getting into the twenty-first century with not a single fight under your belt."

"I also said that I would get better at fighting monsters first. And the first step in that is to find one."

"So then what do you need all the cloth for? I'm pretty sure a few fabrics, belts and boots aren't going to kill a twenty-foot mutant pit-bull." Madison brushed her hair back and watched with curiosity as a shadow moved behind the curtain.

"No, they won't." Vel finally stepped back out of his room and Madison's eyes grew wide open. "But they'll help me look cool while I do it."

Vel came back out in an assortment of white and blue robes using the cloth that Madison had bought him. The belts were strapped across his chest; the mipta—the Greek skirt—was lengthened and circled his waist; his sword and bow were strapped across his back in a cross and the gauntlet was on his arm; a leather shoulder guard protected his other arm; the boots were snug on his feet, and underneath it all was a white long jacket, just like his trench coat. Madison took notice of his face. A masquerade mask was over his face, painted white with golden edges and two blue fangs that stretched down from under it.

Madison got down from the bench and walked up to Vel, looking over the costume he had put together.

"You... how did you put all that together so fast?" Madison inquired in shock.

"I had it all ready to go in my room. What do you think?" Vel replied. The girl checked him out from head to toe once again. She couldn't deny that Vel looked a bit heroic in those clothes.

"You look really cool," she said with a growing smile. Vel smiled back and walked out into the empty bay. He walked around, twirled and pulled out his weapons in order to get used to the feeling.

Madison watched in admiration. It was really a treat to see Vel like this. He looked like the hero he was destined to be to save the world from an invasion. She wondered if Coliseus had a similar getup when he fought the aliens.

Quickly, she pulled out her phone and aimed the camera at the god while Vel was still moving around in his new clothes. She took a picture, but forgot about turning down the volume and the phone snapped. Vel turned his head to her with a curious eyebrow quirked.

"Did you just take a picture of me?" he wondered.

Madison silently cursed herself as she blushed. "No!" she lies, immediately shutting her phone off and pocketing it.

Vel sheathed his sword and stared at the ground in thought for a moment. "Remember when I said I would try to make it up to you that night?" he inquires when he had assorted his mind.

"Yeah."

"Wanna go downtown?"

The girl smiled with glee. "Sure, but first." Madison walked up to Vel and pulled him down by the collar. She placed a kiss on his cheek while wrapping her arms around his neck. "Ok, let's go."

Vel smiled and her and changed back into his coat. He folded up his robes and put them in the back seat of the truck, in case he ever needed them, before they headed out into the city to enjoy their afternoon.

It was a Saturday, so all the businesses, stores, the mall, were packed with people. In the middle of the crowd, Vel and Madison looked like a normal happy couple just having a good time, but the fact that Vel was a god living in a mortal's world, he got all kinds of looks from other girls, who received a jealous glare from Madison from over her shoulder as they walked by.

The two of them walked into a coffee shop near the end of their day and went on to talk about different things to pass the time. Neither of them really wanted to start talking about Vel's duty to the Earth again, so they found other things to discuss. As time became less of a concern to them, it seemed to just fly right past their faces. Madison looked out the window and her facial features grew into shock.

"Oh my gosh, it's so late! I should get home!" she exclaimed with worry and started hastily picking up her phone and bag.

"It's only seven thirty, though." Vel looked out the window and observed the orange sky and pink clouds.

"I know, but I can only be out till eight. Come on!" she urged. She quickly left the booth and Vel chased after her, following her all the way to his truck. Vel found it silly that she was in such a rush to get home until he realized that getting out of crowded downtown Calgary took much longer than he originally thought. They arrived at Madison's house with a few minutes to spare.

"There, see? We made it and it's only five to." Vel turned to Madison. She looked like she was seriously debating something. She was looking straight at the dashboard, biting her lip in thought. "Thinking about something?"

The girl turned to him, still looking like she was thinking. Vel wondered what had her all silent and contemplating, after talking about nothing but school and Madison's musical choice in the violin.

But she finally answered, "Do you want to meet my parents?"

The question caught Vel completely off-guard. Madison had never asked anything like that before. He had never even been inside her house before. She had only spoken of what her parents were like, but never had Vel seen them or had been asked to meet them before. It was a new twist.

"Uh... sure, why not?" Vel replied and killed the engine. They hopped out and walked up to the front door where Madison halted before grabbing the door knob. She turned to Vel, looking worried.

"Before we go in, can I warn you about something?"

"Sure. What would that be?"

"Don't be offended if they stare at you," she told him. "You still look like a god. I'm pretty sure it's not every day a god gets to walk into a girl's house."

"Oh, don't worry about that. This isn't the first time I've been around other people." Vel smiled down at the girl for reassurance. Madison smiled back and opened the door, walking into her home.

Walking into the house brought them to a small room with a closet on the side where they could put their shoes. Into the hall, there were a few open entrances that led to other rooms, such as the living room, the kitchen. But Madison's parents weren't in any of the rooms. They walked up the stairwell and checked the bedrooms, but they weren't there either.

"They must be out or something," Madison concluded. "Their car isn't here."

"So much for meeting the parents." Vel looked around as they entered the living room once again. "I guess I should be going."

"Can't you stick around for a bit?" Madison asked in a cooing voice. Vel leaned against the door frame and sighed, but a smile was still on his face.

"Alright. What do you want to do?"

"Wait right there." Madison turned around and left, running up the stairs to her room.

Vel sat down on the couch and waited for the girl to come back. He looked out the window and saw the sky darkening. He thought about what he was going to do tomorrow; probably going to start some more exercises and training. But how would he get started on this whole save the planet issue? Vel had no idea what to do. He supposed he was going to leave when he felt he was ready and search for the monsters plaguing his world, but who was his true enemy? The Zodrac's presence on the planet wasn't even confirmed yet. If he was going to stop this danger, shouldn't he take it out at source?

Vel had yet to learn any lessons on how to take down a monster properly. He reviewed some history on how the other Greek hero's slew beasts and mythical monsters. The famous heroes of old just killed how they saw fit and there was no particular method of killing. The Hydra for example. If one cut off a head, two more would grow back. Heracles killed the Hydra by burning the stump of the severed neck with a torch to prevent the two heads from growing back.

And then there was the Minotaur, the mythical king-beast of the Labyrinth. Theseus was said to have drove his sword straight into the head of the monster, or he used its own cut-off horn to kill it.

Perseus famously killed Medusa by decapitating the gorgon and used its head to turn the monster Cetus into a statue. Vel could see a pattern. It was obvious; decapitation or damage to the head of any living animal would kill it. But Vel wasn't quite sure what kind of monsters he was facing. Coliseus was famous for slaying creatures of different kinds. If they were all like the monsters he fought in the park and in the small town in Lemnos – big, strong and lethal – then he needed to develop a method of dealing with such monsters.

He saw Madison run back down the stairs and walk into the room, holding a small box in her hands. There was a sheepish grin on her face and she took a seat next to him and set down the box.

"What's in there?" he asked.

"Open it and find out. It's for you," Madison told him.

"For me? You didn't have to do that." Vel picked up the box and looked at it, trying to get an idea of what could be inside. It was light, so it couldn't have been anything heavily decorated.

"I wanted to anyway. Remember when I said that you were the coolest thing that's ever happened to me? I meant it." As Madison spoke, Vel opened the box lid and looked inside. What he found surprised him. Vel picked a small little necklace with a figurine hanging from it; a silver flying phoenix with long, flaming wings and swishing tail feathers.

"Where... in the world did you get this?" Vel asked with incredulous shock. Madison smiled as her efforts seemed to be paying off.

"The jewelry store, where else?" she replied. "I thought I'd get you something nice, you know? Since all you've done is treat me with kindness, I thought I've return the favor with a gift!" Madison brushed her hair back and laughed. "I know it's kind of cheesy, but that's how I felt. Do you like it?"

Vel rubbed the pendant between his fingers and felt the soft, smooth shape of the metal. The silver gleamed in the faint light of the setting sun like another light in the room. It was really pretty and really cool. Vel put the necklace on and looked down as it hung from his neck. He glanced at Madison and smiled.

"It's cool. I really like it," he said to her. He put his arm around the girl and hugged her briefly. "Thank you, Madison. This is a great gift."

"You're welcome. I just wanted to let you know how much you mean to me." The girl put her hand on top of Vel's. "I know you're still here for a little longer, but please make sure you come back alive and well."

Madison looked up at Vel with pleading eyes, sincerity and worry in them. The man could tell that she was honestly worried about him and really cared. Vel pulled the girl towards him and placed a kiss on her forehead.

"I will. Just you wait," he said. The girl blushed immensely at the contact and smiled, which Vel found cute. She hugged him back, digging her head into his chest.

They settled down on the couch and watched some TV for a few hours, during which Madison's parents never came back. She assumed that they were out for a late night dinner somewhere. Vel began to realize that as it got late, the girl started to feel drowsy and fall asleep on top of him. Vel tried not to wake her up as he scooped her up into his arms and brought her up to her bed. He set her down in the blankets and left the house without making another sound.

Vel jumped into his truck and drove away. As he was driving, he noticed that his rear-view mirror was constantly blinding him from the reflected light of a car behind him. Vel checked behind him and saw a black van was following close behind him, too close in fact. He came to a stop at an intersection and waited until the light turned green. Once it did, he floored it across the street. Vel was surprised to see that the van kept up with him.

Vel turned a sharp corner and kept his speed. The van followed him around the corner but lost some distance. He was certain that this vehicle was following him for some reason now, so he kept doing this until he finally lost the van turning down an exit road onto the highway. He made sure that the van was completely lost before finding his way back to his warehouse. It was definitely weird. Vel had no idea who that was, but he had to remind himself to be careful in the streets for now on.

**Peacekeeper**


	9. Masked Hero: Chapter 6

**Enemies of Earth**

Monday rolled around and Vel trained and studied some more about monster killing and techniques. To get some legitimate training, Vel went down to the one gloomy, dark, fiery place that could provide him with the training he needed; the Underworld, over the weekend to get an idea of what fighting a monster was like.

Being the first place where Vel discovered his immortal heritage, Vel had a fairly good relationship with the deities of the world below. Hades, the almighty king, allowed him time to 'play' with Cerberus, because only the Fates know that it had been thousands of years since his precious canine had been in any physical activity. Cerberus wasn't as big as most people thought. It was only about three feet taller than Vel, who stood nearly seven feet himself. Being that it was the middle of autumn, Persephone was there as well to watch them roughhouse with amusement. Too rough, in fact. Everyday Vel left with a few bruises and scratches.

A break came in his training, so Vel decided to visit Madison at her school once again. It was around lunchtime and she always sat at the far end of the lunch room, farthest table to the left at the very far corner. Upon walking into the cafeteria, Vel was again shocked by the amount of students that were in the lunchroom. Crescent Heights hosted around fourteen-hundred kids, and about a third of them could fit into the cafeteria before they had to start squeezing them in.

He spotted the mortal girl sitting in her usual spot, chatting with a friend. It was someone new, someone whom Vel had never met before. Madison had a few close friends, but Vel had been introduced to all of them at some point in time. Not this person. This new, amazingly beautiful brunette girl someone he had never met, but Madison seemed to be talking to her like they were best friends.

And then he remembered what Madison said to him about who had visited her the other day. Walking up behind the girl, he crossed his arms and looked down at her. Madison looked up and found him, and the smile from her lips faded. The girl gave her a quizzical look before she sensed Vel's presence behind her and looked up. There he could see it; trademark bright blue eyes.

"Your duty is done. You can go back to Olympus now, _Nike_," Vel told the goddess in disguise.

"But it's so much fun here! There's so many things to do. Please don't make me go," she pleads in a whiny voice. Vel glanced at Madison for a moment, but the girl only shrugged.

"We're having fun, Vel. Let her stay," she added. Vel sighed and walked around the table to sit by Madison's side.

"So what are you two talking about?" he inquired.

"Oh, nothing, just life," Nike replied to him. "I like your necklace."

"Thank you. She got it for me." Vel nudged his head in Madison direction. The girl blushed and smiled. Nike smiled mischievously. Vel knew that smile, even when she was in a disguise, knowing the goddess very personally and once being her lover. It was a smile she made whenever she was about to tease him about something.

"Oh, really? What was it a gift for? A gift of friendship? A gift of lo—"

"Nike!" Madison interrupted the girl, though Vel had a pretty good idea of what Nike was going to say. The girl's face turned bright red as she looked away in embarrassment. The goddess across from them only smiled wickedly.

"So what are you doing here, Nike? Got nothing better to do?" Vel asked.

"Sort of. I suppose with all the monsters roaming around that I have to be at Zeus' side awaiting orders, but he's given me no such demand yet. That left me with some time to myself so I'm staying down here until I'm called to arms."

"Are you two like best friends already?"

Madison didn't answer.

"You could say something like that," Nike said. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah, she's fine. She does that when she gets embarrassed by something, so I think you got her," Vel whispered to Nike. The woman smiled in satisfactory. Vel reached over to pick up the half-eaten pizza that Madison left on the table. "Are you going to finish this?"

"No. Go ahead, it eat," she quickly replied, while still turned away from the two. Vel shrugged and proceeded to eat the rest of her food.

Though neither the three of them noticed, five men—all in a black suit jacket, black pants, dress shoes and a red tie—walked into the cafeteria. They each coordinated their movements with each other as they walked down from one end of the room to the other, towards Vel, Nike and Madison.

Vel got up to throw his plastic plate into the garbage, where then he noticed the men walking into the cafeteria, walking around the tables slowly, occasionally stopping to spot the other men like them. He saw that they all had an earpiece of some sort with a red blinking light on them. One of the men stopped just across the far end of the table from him and the girls and glanced at them.

The red blinking light turned green.

"I found them!" the man spoke into a wristwatch, which Vel realized now was actually a communication gadget, and he quickly pulled out a gun from inside his coat. Vel reacted instantly, lifting up the table in front of him and ducking to avoid the bullets that penetrated the wooden tabletop.

Kids all around them panicked and ducked as the other men in black suits drew handguns as well, pointing them towards where the shooting was. The man who shot the first bullet looked around when he realized Vel had disappeared once the tabled landed on the ground, and then remembered that Nike was also there and pointed his gun at her.

He was suddenly taken out by the legs and his chin hit the edge of the table. Vel had slid under the table and kicked his legs out from under him. He got up and used his elbow to smash the back of the bald man's head into the edge of the table again, knocking him out. He ducked when the other men started shooting. Vel heard screams, but kept his head down. He grabbed the bars of the table and flipped the whole thing on its side and turned it around so he could use it as cover. Nike and Madison had fallen back when the table was flipped and joined him behind the table.

"Who are these guys?" Nike yelled above the screams and shouts of the kids around them as they tried to find their way out of the lunchroom. Madison was gripping Vel's arm tightly, looking around with fear and confusion in her eyes.

"I don't know, but we can't let the kids get hurt! We need to get out of here! Try to blend in with the crowd!" Vel ordered, pushing Nike and Madison towards a wave of kids as they ran by. Madison tried to get out of the crowd and back to Vel, but she was whisked away with the current of bodies. The men had stopped shooting, but were quickly making their way closer to Vel.

He needed a short method of distracting them, so he decided to pick up the table and toss it towards them. The lunch table flipped a few times, knocking over a man in black suit or two. When they got up and pointed their guns again, Vel was not standing there anymore.

Instead, Vel was with the crowd, evacuating the school cafeteria. He broke away from the crowd and looked around as he thought that somehow Nike might have escaped as well.

"Vel!" he hears a feminine voice shout. He turned his head and found that, down the hall, Nike and Madison were trying to flag him down, standing next to the open bathroom stalls. Vel ran his way over to them.

"Who are those guys?" Madison asked again.

"I don't know, but they know something about us, somehow. I saw it on the earpieces they were wearing. Did you see them? He turned to us and it was like he knew!"

"How did he know we were different?" the goddess asked in a panic.

"I don't know. We need to get them out of the school before they start shooting innocent people. Madison, get out of the school and find a way home."

"What? But what about you?" the girl inquired. Vel grabbed a hold of her shoulders and looked the girl in the eye, a serious look on his face.

"I'll be fine. Look, this is the whole reason why I can't be around for much longer. I don't want you to get involved in our fighting. Go home! I'll come find you later."

Madison remained silent for a few seconds before she threw her arms around Vel quickly and then separated from him to run down the hall, away from the commotion. The man turned back to the panicked crowded and glanced at Nike.

"My robes and weapons are at my truck. I need to get them quickly. Make sure they don't hurt anyone while I'm gone!" he told the goddess. Nike nodded and Vel turned to run to the nearest exit. He found his way to his truck and opened the door. There, his robes and weapons were stacked neatly in a pile. He changed as quickly as he could while nobody was around. His mask was the last thing he put on before shutting the door and running back to the school.

He spotted Nike hiding at the corner of a wall, peaking around the edge to see of the men attacking the school were coming this way. She turned her head and her face was full of surprise when she saw Vel in his robes.

"What is this?" she asked.

"This is my getup. Like it?" Vel replied as he drew his sword and shield.

"Yeah, it's cool. Okay, let's go!"

Nike changed into her true form and they both then ran out into the hallway. The ceiling was high enough that the goddess could take flight with her wings and draw her torch staff from her belt. The kids were still filing out of the lunchroom, so Vel had to jump on the wall and over them reach the other side of the river of kids. That's where he found some of the men in the black suits.

Vel put his shield in front of him at the men started shooting their guns. One of them attempted to shoot his foot, but Vel's steel toes protected his feet. Nike flew around and picked up one of the men, flinging him out the window to where he landed against the hood of a black van parked just outside.

Vel removed his shield untimely and was hit on the side of the face with the fist of one of the black suited men, but the hit was weak, or he was stronger than he thought. Vel kept his footing and turned around to swing the edge of his shield into the man's face, which knocked him all the way back into a glass showcase up on the wall. Two of the five men were down, leaving three more standing in the hallway. He kept his shield out, but traded his sword for his bow and picked out a man by shooting the gun out of his hands with an arrow. He didn't want to hurt the men too badly, but he had to disable them quickly so a stray bullet wouldn't hit any vulnerable student.

Nike took out another black suit, deflecting a bullet with her staff with excellent timing and swooping in to take him out. Vel ran up to the other man and clubbed him in the head with his shield.

When he turned around, he found the last man was running down the hall, having lost his gun to Vel's bow. Vel withdrew his weapons and gave chase. He followed him down the hall and around the corner, where he stopped and drew his bow quickly when he found the terrible situation he was suddenly in.

The bald man had grabbed a kid by the collar of his shirt and drew a knife from his pocket, pointing it at the scrawny kid's neck. The teenager looked young, so he must have been from the lower grades in the school. The black suited man was using the student as a hostage.

"Put the knife down!" Vel demanded flatly. The man didn't respond. He hooked his arm around the student's neck and grabbed the earpiece from his ear and pointed it at Vel. The light on the device started blinking green, and a devilish smile grew on the man's lips.

"So you really are one of them. They weren't kidding when they said your kind was still around," he fumbled to say. "I didn't believe it at first, but when I look at you, I realize they were right. And your winged friend is just more evidence to provide."

"Put. The knife. Down," Vel threatened.

"Remove your mask so I can see your face!" the man shot back. Vel hesitated to reply. He knew that showing his true form was risky, but he had _always_ been in his true form. He just had a change of clothes. So he couldn't comply.

Too long of a silence passed on for the man and his patience ran out. "Too bad for the kid then."

He then stuck the knife in the student's throat.

"No!" Vel shouted. He released the arrow and hit the bald man's shoulder, but it didn't stop him from letting go of the student and turning around to run away.

Vel ran next to the kid and knelt down to him as he had fallen to the floor. The knife was left on the floor, the blade covered in blood, and more of it was spilling out of the kid's neck. It wasn't an instant kill because Vel could still feel a pulse and the kid's eyes were wide open, staring up at him in fear and shock. Something had to be done quickly or the poor boy was going to bleed to death.

Nike finally came around and stopped next to Vel. She saw the kid on the ground and the man running away.

"I'll go after him!" Nike announced. Vel grabbed her wrist to stop her.

"No. He's mine. Take care of this boy!" Vel told her. Nike nodded and knelt down next to the boy as Vel got up and started running after the man.

Vel saw the man take a turn to the left and keep running. Vel made it to the turn soon after him and saw him sprinting as fast as he could towards the doors that led outside. Vel gave pursuit, catching up extremely quickly thanks to his natural ability to run fast. On top of that, being immortal helped him run extra fast. So by the time the man reached the door, Vel was already on him. He jumped on his back and they crashed through the glass doors, landing on the cold hard cement floor on the other side.

Just as the man was getting to his knees, Vel already got back to him and kicked him in the ribs to so he couldn't get up.

"Stay the fuck down!" Vel spat. He pinned the man to the ground by holding his arms behind his back and reached for a piece of rope from his belt pocket. "Who are you? And what do you want with me?"

The man didn't answer. Vel yanked the earpiece from the man's ear.

"What's this? What does it do?" Vel interrogated. When the man still didn't say anything, he shouted, "Answer me!"

The man kept quiet. Vel pointed the device at himself, noticing that the red light immediately changed green. He put the strange device in one of the pockets across his chest and picked the man up by his wrists.

The first police car arrived by the time Vel had rounded the school and thrown the man with the rest of the thugs that were dressed like him. The principal of the school, whom Vel recognized, some other teachers and the gym teachers especially were standing around them. Vel couldn't see Nike anywhere, but he assumed she was close by. He could hear the sirens of an ambulance coming as well. The student who got stabbed was laid down next to the front doors with the school nurse and a few others crowded around him, trying to keep him alive. Vel could see white clothes, towels and other small medical supplies there as well.

Vel ignored the presence of the mortals that stared at him in disbelief as he knelt down in front of a different man in a black suit, hoping to get some answers.

"So who are you people? What are you doing at this school?" he asked.

"We came looking for you," the man answered after a small moment of staring blankly at him.

"Why? How did you know we would be here?"

"Why should I tell you that?" the man replied, and then sent a wad of spit into Vel's mask. Vel grabbed a cloth from his pocket and wiped it away, walking from the man as more police vehicles arrived along with the ambulance vehicles. The officers came to take the men away and the wounded student was placed onto a stretcher. Vel stuck around. He wanted to know more.

"Excuse me!" Vel called out to a police officer. The man on duty turned around and caught sight of Vel's unique figure.

"Yes? What can I do for you?" he officer said.

"Is there anything you can tell me about those men? Where they came from? What they're doing here?"

The officer shook his head. "Sorry. Interrogating starts at the station. But we did confiscate all their weapons and devices. All they had were hand guns and what appear to be earpiece detectors, but we have no idea what they detect. As for how they got here, all I can say is that they came in that black van in front there." The officer pointed to a vehicle parked next to the sidewalk just in front of the school. It was a plain black van with the rear doors open as more policemen searched the vehicle. It was the same vehicle that had followed him that night before.

Vel went to the van himself. As the officers went to check the front seats, Vel looked in the back, seeing that the back seats had been taken out in place of a bunch of computer equipment and gadgets that Vel had never seen before. But as he looked around, he saw a few sonar screens with one blinking light been detected nearby. Vel took a glance outside and looked towards the building, surprised to find Nike looking down on the scene from on top of the school roof, exactly where the machine detected her.

"Long-range sensors…" Vel declared. That's what they had to be for sure. Now he understood how the men had found him and Nike in the school. They must have caught his signal as he was driving by and followed him here. The question Vel wanted to know was what about he and Nike made the computers identify them?

Vel stepped back out of the van and caught sight of the injured student about to be taken to the hospital. He was cleaned up and there was a patch over the wound, but the kid still looked pale and in shock. Vel stood beside him and pulled out a small bottle of clear blue liquid. He poured some onto his hand and pressed it against the patch where the wound was, letting the liquid soak through the patch to the skin.

"You're gonna be okay, kid," he murmured. Vel then quickly put the bottle back into his pocket and walked away from the scene, around to where the student parking was back to his truck. He could see Nike fly down to the ground close by and change into her mortal form before rendezvousing with him at his vehicle.

"So? What did you find?" Nike inquired.

"A bunch of gadgets and silent crooks," Vel answered with a sigh. "Those devices those men were using could somehow detect you and me individually. They had sensors that could detect our presence, even from far away. That's how they found us."

"But how can they do that? Why us? Is there something in us that makes us stand out?" Nike inquired, but the answered was obvious to Vel already.

"Our blood," Vel stated.

"How can they detect the difference in our blood? All traces of our blood that the mortals got a hold of were taken! They were always taken!" Nike replied in a panic. This made Vel think back to the times where he was still young, when doctors took samples of his blood for testing because of his inhuman ability to heal fast. Athena explained to him when he was on Olympus that they had someone go down and secretly take those samples away before scientists could go testing on it, or were silenced if they already knew.

"I don't know, but for now on we have to be careful. There may be more of those men around. I'm going to try and get some answers." Vel opened his car door and turned back to Nike. "Don't stay around the school so much. It'll get innocent people hurt like that kid, ok?"

The goddess nodded and Vel stepped into his truck. It was very strange how mortals could find him and Nike in a school full of kids like that so easily. He couldn't say how they did it, but the situation was very real and very dangerous. It meant trouble for him, and along with all of these monsters popping up around the world trying to find and kill him, Vel now had two parties to avoid.

The world was suddenly becoming a very dangerous place to be.

**Peacekeeper**

* * *

Hhrrrrrrrrrrrrrr school is taking up my time! I haven't worked on my writing at all this week because I'm so busy! See, this is why planning and writing ahead of time is good.

Anyway, now that I'm back in art class 20/30, I've been inspired more and more to draw my characters, since I've a bit of skill within me. Hopefully I'll have something big by the end of May to show you guys related to this story!


	10. Masked Hero: Chapter 7

**Enemies of Earth**

Day became night as the blue sky transitioned through orange into black with small bright speckles of light flicking ever so slightly. The gray haze over the city of Calgary slowly went away as the sun took a slow dive into the horizon, trading places with the bright silver moon. The lights of the buildings and streets below seemed to breathe life into the city and make Calgary look like a busy place from above. One would need a good place to see all this and observe the city from the perfect perspective.

Vel was in one such place. At the very edge of a crane tower that was standing tall on one of Calgary's taller buildings going under construction, he stood perched and watched as the city streets below moved with hustling life and traffic. Being so high was almost intimidating, but an excellent sense of balance helped Vel as he crouched perfectly still at the long end of the crane. There was only a slight breeze, but every once and a while the crane would rock a bit and he would stiffen.

He was up there all by himself, just watching the world below move, his mask pulled up and his long raven hair flailing smoothly in the breeze. He heard some clicking behind him and turned to look over his shoulder, but had to do a double take when he realized what he found.

A doe with smooth gray fur and a white underbelly and legs was standing behind him a ways back, each dark hoof balanced perfectly on a metal bar that made up the long arm of the crane. Vel stared at it with jaw agape and wide eyes, but soon came to realize _exactly_ what it was. He snickered and turned back around to the city.

"Really? Nobody finds a deer on top of a crane in the middle of a city," he speaks out loud. "Let alone a silver one. Good try, though."

The doe behind him began to glow and transformed into a beautiful dark-haired woman in simple hunter's clothes with a bow and quiver on her back. With her own excellent balance, she walked up behind Vel and bent over to rest her hands on his shoulders and spoke into his ear.

"Maybe if you weren't standing on the highest point of the city, it would have worked a lot better," she told him in a calm voice.

Vel rose. "I needed a quiet place to think, clear my head up a little." He turned around a met a pair of dark eyes. Dark as they were, though, the moonlight revealed a touch of brown in them. He smiles brightly as he says, "It's good to see you again, Artemis."

The Goddess of the Moon smiled and the two of them embraced in a hug. The last time Vel had seen Artemis was only a few years after his leave from Olympus. They had a long talk about what Vel could find exploring the world and who he would meet. To this day, despite not seeing her for a long time, Artemis remained one his closest friends and greatest admire.

"It's been too long," Artemis spoke as her head was up against his chest. Vel's figure was much bigger than hers thanks to the labor he put himself through the last few days. Her chin could no longer reach his broadened shoulder.

"Well, that's what happens when you travel the world. You gotta stay fit." Vel released the woman and she stepped back to scan him from head to toe.

"So these are your robes, now?" she inquires with interest.

"This is my battle gear, now," Vel confirmed.

"You know, you could have asked Hephaestus to make you some armor while you were at his forge."

"Yeah, but I wanted to go with something unique that was my style. Maybe I'll ask Athena to weave me something better when I find the time." Vel was not surprised at all that Artemis knew about his trip to the God of Fire's forge. She probably heard it through some gossip or something with her finely tuned ears. Rumors traveled very fast on Olympus.

"I'm not saying it looks bad. It's very nice, actually. It really makes you look like a true hero, without all the fancy capes and tights the mortal-made superheroes have these days," Artemis replied.

"Yeah. I wasn't too fond of the tights." Vel turned around half-way to gaze at the city again and placed his hands on his hips. "So what brings you here? Just dropping by to say hello?"

"Yes. I haven't seen you for a long time so I though now would be a good time, and to discuss with you about what your plan is with our… current dilemma," Artemis said, joining him directly at his side.

"Well, it's kind of a straightforward path right now; find the monsters, kill them and make sure nobody gets hurt in the process."

"Apollo says they're multiplying all over the world. If this keeps up, they can kill just about every mortal out there until they find you," the goddess pointed out. "You're not going to go out there?"

"What's the point? Isn't it better if I wait here where I know the land better and let them come to me? Instead of going out in the wild and having no clue where my enemy is going to pop up?"

"Well, when your own land is a crowded city," Artemis spoke, moving her gaze along the city landscape, "it might be a better idea to move out, especially if you don't want innocent people getting hurt."

Vel's lips pursed as he figured Artemis was correct. "Ah… right." He sighed and slowly sat himself down on the edge of the crane. Artemis joined him, but could feel something was on Vel's mind when he looked out at the city with a blank gaze. It was like he wasn't even paying any attention to what his eyes beheld.

"Are you alright?" Artemis inquired. "You seem… distracted."

"I've just been thinking… about these monsters that are appearing," Vel told her. Even his voice didn't sound like his own. This was something that had Artemis suddenly very worried. "What is it that causing them all to appear like this so suddenly? I mean I understand that they were created by the Zodrac, but why now? Why not when I was still… in my mother's womb! Whoever she was…"

"It's because we saw it coming. We had enough time to choose who we would want to save our mother earth," the goddess answered.

"Then… why me?"

Artemis reached over to Vel's hand and held it up in front of them both. Her hand felt so smooth against his skin. "Do you see that? What is that?"

"Symbolically or literally?" Vel inquired. Artemis gave him a stern look, and Vel understood immediately. "Well, it's my hand."

"Exactly, but it's your skin that I mean; your figure, Vel. Your body size, your strength, your hair… even your eyes. Every aspect that makes up who you are reminds us all of the man who saved all humans from this dangerous foe many years ago. We knew when we found you that you were the one. Even the Fates knew it."

"Did they know about the deaths of my family as well?" Vel asked. Artemis remained quiet. "Of course they did. They can see everything coming."

"They determine what happens. The Fates made it so your family would die."

"But why!?" Vel shouts in a suddenly outburst, slamming his fists into the crane, which made it rock back and forth quite a bit. Artemis had to grab a hold of the crane in order to not fall off from all the shaking. Once the crane stopped rocking, Vel yanked his fists out from where he had hit the metal, leaving fist-prints behind. "Why did they do it?" he inquired weakly.

Artemis didn't want to provide an answer for him, because there was only one answer to it; it was fate.

"I could've saved them. If I had known that I had the power to stop that thing… I could've saved Rachael," Vel spoke with a failing voice. "She could still have lived and had a wonderful life. All I want is the chance to tell her I'm sorry for all the things I did to her. I abused her. I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to look after her and instead I ignored her! Now she's gone and… I can hardly live with myself."

The Goddess of the Moon placed a hand on Vel's shoulder to show support. "Maybe she is gone. Maybe you can never see her again. But think about the things that you can do that would've made her proud to say she was your brother. You know what Persephone told me when she brought your family to the Elysian Fields?" Vel looked up at Artemis. She knew she had suddenly caught his interest with that statement. "She said that Rachael mentioned how she would miss you and that she was upset that she couldn't see you anymore. Rachael still loved you, even if she had to endure all the things that you did to her. She had unwavering care for you. It's not like she hasn't forgiven you for all the terrible things you did."

Artemis stared at Vel after she finished, trying to determine if her words had helped Vel to see the light. He remained still for a long time as the breeze continued whisking past them.

Finally, Vel turned to Artemis with a slight smile on the side of his lips. "Thanks. I needed to hear that."

"You're welcome," she replies with a satisfied grin. "Will you be able to concentrate now?"

"Yeah. I think so," Vel nodded. He pauses for a moment before he asks, "What are they like? The Zodrac. I've only seen one of them, and it wasn't even for that long." His mind briefly flashed back to that horrible day when the giant monster came, tearing his house to shreds. All the destruction, all the noise, all the screaming he made. It was enough to make him shiver. "But from what I saw it do… I imagine they're pretty horrible."

Artemis closed her eyes as she tried to think. There was a reason why Vel wasn't taught the history of their enemy before—it would fill him with fear, anger and anxiety. Athena had said it would distract him from his lessons—but it couldn't hurt to tell him now. He needed to know who he was up against.

"We don't know everything about the Zodrac," she started. "They just appeared one day, all of a sudden. They came from the stars with the intent of inhabiting our world for their own needs. But they realized it was already taken by us, the immortals and mortals. We told them to leave, but they wouldn't. They said that our world has something that they wanted, but we didn't know what it was."

"Do you know now?" Vel inquired, to which Artemis shook her head.

"They never told us, which I think was for their own safety reasons. So we began to fight to protect Gaia. At first it started just in the heavens, above the clouds where their vessels first entered our world. But then the war spread to the lands below."

"And that's where the legend of Coliseus started," Vel added.

"Yes. Coliseus had gone through the same training you did and left after it was completed. He was just a mercenary trying to make a living helping others. His fame is what helped us find him again. Coliseus was a great leader. It was said that he could make the impossible possible. When we found him, he had already made a name and a family for himself. When we told him of our plight, Coliseus led a band of soldiers across the land to ask the most powerful kingdoms to join forces so we could kill the Zodrac once we lured them to Earth."

"What do you mean when you say he could make the impossible possible?" Vel inquired.

"You know how Athena is the one that makes all the battle strategies?" Artemis raised forth. Vel nodded his head. "Well, Coliseus was just like that, except in tighter situations. He could get all his men to safety if they were led into a trap. He could save a life if someone was about to be attacked; those kinds of things. They were things that nobody else could pull off in those kinds of situations."

"He could think under pressure, is what you're saying," Vel cleared up.

"M-hm. Coliseus led the largest army in Greek history in the battle against the Zodrac. He killed their leader and trapped the remains of his body in the trunk of a large tree and forced the rest of them to leave our planet. They promised they would return, though," Artemis tells him. She then got up to her feet and stood at the edge of the arm of the crane. Vel rose also, but remained in his spot.

"Is it because they want their leader's body back?" Vel asked. The goddess shook her head.

"No. It's because they want revenge. We moved the great tree after they left so the Zodrac could never find it. Even if they could get their leader back, they couldn't do anything with it. The Zodrac's powers are strong, but limited to only a strange type of energy that can harm us immortals. Coliseus agreed to fight them because he could defend himself against that power that they used."

Vel let out a big sigh and placed his hands on his hips. "It sounds like a lot is expected of me. If people believe I'm supposed to become great like Coliseus, how is it that I'm supposed do exactly what he did if I don't have an army to fight the Zodrac? I don't think I can convince the mortals in today's world to join me in fighting an alien that hasn't even shown up yet."

Artemis turned around. Oddly, she had a smile plastered on her face. She shook her head again. "You don't have to do exactly what he did. You just have to accomplish what he did. It's really a thick line between method and goal. If you can kill the Zodrac by yourself, then you might be one of the most powerful gods in the world. This enemy is not someone to take lightly, Vel."

"I know. I got that impression already." Vel slapped his hands together and rubbed them. Being at such a high altitude with a breeze gently blowing was proving to be cold. It was getting ever later into the night as well. Vel held his hands up to his nose, almost in a praying gesture and thought about all the expectations he had to keep up with.

Admittedly, it frightened him a little. Vel was just a boy with immortal blood and simple weapons strapped to his back. He didn't have a lot of special powers that he could use to help him. Looking at his current strength now, Vel knew he still had a long way to go.

But then he spared a thought to his family. His father, his mother and sister were all living their afterlife peacefully after a horrible death that he couldn't prevent. If Vel had powers—even if he knew that horrid day was coming—he would do anything it took to save them. All he wanted was a second chance.

But he had no powers. He only had himself, a sword, a bow, and a shield.

"For them," he declared, letting his hands swing down to his sides. "The only thing I can do now is fight for them, my family. I won't let those things disgrace my home any longer. I'll find them, and I'll kill them."

Artemis walked to his side and her hand gently slipped into his. Vel looked her in the eye; there was concern.

"Just be careful. Vengeance and anger can make you blind," she cautions him. Vel nodded in understanding. "Okay. I have to leave. My forests need protection from those abominations walking around." She then reached up and placed a kiss on his cheek. "Good luck, Velinda."

She walked away and Vel looked back down at the city. He was already starting to think of a plan to help him find his enemy and kill it. There were only a few leads he had; the monsters spawning everywhere and mysterious men in black suits that were popping up out of nowhere. He would have to go back to the police station and see if he could get some answers. It was strange how mortals were mixed into this situation. Why would they be after him?

"Hey Artemis." Vel turned to see if perhaps the goddess knew anything about mortals hunting him. But when he looked, she was already gone. "Nevermind, then." He turned his head back to the city and sighed. He finally decided to head back home and he climbed his way back down the tall crane and jump from building to building, keeping out of sight.

**Peacekeeper**

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Man, it's only a month into my second and last semester of school and I'm already freaking out about getting all the art projects done in time! I'm not sure if I even start on a title poster for this story... fingers crossed though.

Also, special thanks to my first reviewer, **Red and Mouse**!


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